Export bans on British poultry because of the bird flu outbreak on a Suffolk turkey farm are unjustified, the European Commission said today. The warning came as European Union (EU) veterinary experts in Brussels approved the continuing health security measures around the Bernard Matthews property.

A Commission spokesman urged countries which have already responded with poultry trade blockades against the UK – Japan, Russia, Hong Kong and South Korea – to resume business as usual as soon as possible. He said: “Any generalised ban on exports from the UK is totally disproportionate.”

He said that the security measures now in force were intended to isolate the infected area and provide a “buffer zone” to contain the spread of the disease. As that had now been done in line with pre-agreed EU contingency plans, only a localised trade restriction on poultry from the affected area could be justified.

He said: “The whole idea of the measures is to avoid the need for a general trade ban on poultry against the EU member state concerned.”

However, a spokesman for the British Poultry Council said that poultry exports total around £300 million, against domestic sales of £3.5 billion. He said that Japan does not buy British poultry and that the ban there is “window dressing” for concerned citizens.

Experts on the EU’s standing committee on the food chain and animal health – made up of national government vets from the 27 member states – met today to discuss the issue. They approved the measures in place in the UK and urged all member states to review security measures and to keep poultry indoors in high-risk areas.

The committee discussed vaccination of flocks against the virus, but concluded that widespread vaccination would not be feasible at this time.

The cull of almost 160,000 birds at the Bernard Matthews farm in Holton was completed last night. Vets were called to the farm last Thursday after hundreds of turkeys died. Tests later confirmed the presence of the deadly H5N1 strain of avian flu.

Experts are still working to try to find the source of the strain, which has killed 164 people since January 2003, mainly in Asia and the Middle East. Some fear that the virus could mutate to spread easily between humans, causing a devastating pandemic.

The Suffolk outbreak came just weeks after the discovery of H5N1 on two farms in southeastern Hungary, the first detection of the disease in the European Union since last August. Yesterday, Bernard Matthews admitted that lorries from Hungary had made regular visits to the Holton farm.

The Department of Health said that the risk from H5N1 to the general public remains "extremely low". The department confirmed that the Government holds emergency stockpiles of the antiviral Tamiflu for a quarter of the population.

Environment Secretary David Miliband yesterday reassured consumers that it was safe to continue eating poultry and eggs. But the UK’s largest supermarket, Tesco, has already seen a small dip in its poultry sales, which were down a single digit percentage point. Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s said sales of poultry and eggs remained unchanged.

Defra has set up a restricted area of more than 800 square miles surrounding the stricken farm to try to contain the virus. This will remain in place, with other "surveillance" and "protection" zones, until further notice, and for at least 21 days.

Dominique de Villepin, the French prime minister, today ordered stricter measures to ward off the virus in response to the outbreaks in Britain and Hungary. A new version of the country’s bird flu plan will be released in the coming days.

Elsewhere, Pakistan confirmed that H5N1 had been found in a chicken flock at a home near Islamabad and in peacocks in a village in the north west of the country.

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