Germany today reported 22 new cases of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, as politicians gave warning that the virus was getting out of control.

Till Backhaus, a German agriculture minister, said that he believed that there was now a growing risk of H5N1 spreading to the country’s poultry farms.

The disease - previously confined to the Baltic island of Ruegen - has now been confirmed on the German mainland. A state of emergency was declared in two districts of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, to allow the army to be deployed for disease control measures.

"We do not have this in hand," Herr Backhaus told the AFP news agency.

Today veterinary officials from all 25 member states of the European Union were held a one day meeting in Brussels to reassess the threat from bird flu and to discuss how to respond.

The EU’s Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health is expected to decide tomorrow that limited vaccination plans in the Netherlands and France should be given the go-ahead.

The Commission’s formal proposal to the veterinary experts is likely to clear the way for the Dutch and French to embark on "preventive vaccination" if they wish - while the rest of the EU wrestles with other prevention schemes.

The H5N1 virus has devastated poultry stocks and killed at least 91 people, mostly in Asia, since 2003, according to the World Health Organisation. Most human cases of the disease have been linked to contact with infected birds.

But scientists fear the virus could mutate into a form that is easily transmitted between humans, sparking a pandemic.

When the EU veterinary experts last met, on December 12, H5N1 had yet to reach the Continent.

Cases have since been confirmed within the EU in Austria, Germany, Greece, Italy, Slovenia and France, although all have so far have been confined to migratory wild birds rather than in domestic poultry flocks. Hungary today confirmed its first three cases of H5N1.

Meanwhile Slovakia became the eighth EU country to report bird flu after finding the H5 strain in a wild hawk and a smew, a type of duck, near its borders with Austria and Hungary. The dead birds have been sent to the EU's special laboratory at Weybridge in Surrey for further analysis, to see if it is H5N1.