An outbreak of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (Bird Flu) was confirmed yesterday at a large gamebird rearing farm in North Yorkshire.
A 3km Protection Zone and a 10km Surveillance Zone have been declared around Westfield Farms, near Cropton and all gamebirds on the premises will be humanely killed.
Westfield Farms Ltd, whose latest accounts show a value of over £5.3 Million, produces Pheasants, Red-legged Partridges, Grey Partridges and Mallards for the gamebird shooting industry.
Some of you may recognise the name Westfield Farms. In 2015, Director Michael Wood successfully overturned a conviction for permitting the use of a pole trap at this gamebird rearing facility.
North Yorkshire Police, assisted by the RSPB, had seized a total of five pole traps that had been placed around the rearing pens, and two employees received police cautions (they weren’t prosecuted).
However, Mr Wood’s conviction was later overturned on appeal because the prosecution couldn’t demonstrate that Mr Wood had seen the pole trap that he was filmed driving past in his vehicle (see here).
This is the 95th confirmed outbreak of Avian Influenza in the UK since October 2025 (the outbreak season is recorded from 1st October to 30 September each year).
This surpasses the 82 recorded outbreaks during the entire 2024/2025 outbreak season.
Defra will need to decide imminently whether it will issue General Licence 45 for this year’s shooting season. This is the General Licence that permits the release of gamebirds on or within 500m of a Special Protection Area (SPA), which was introduced after a legal challenge by Wild Justice about damage to protected sites by gamebirds.
Last year, Defra withdrew GL45 due to the high risk of spreading Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza. Given the high number of reported HPAI outbreaks since Oct 2025 (95 at the time of writing), I anticipate Defra will not issue GL45 this year.
If that happens, then it will fall to Natural England to make decisions about issuing individual licences to permit the release of gamebirds on/close to SPAs.
Last year, Natural England took a sensible and precautionary approach and refused licences at many sites (see here), although as we’ve seen, some shoot operators might think the law doesn’t apply to them and the consequences are so minimal it’s probably worth them taking the risk.
But at what cost to protected wildlife?
Raptor Persecution UK 
What exactly is humanely killed? They are not humanely killed when released to the wild and shot. I can well imagine how the poor darling birds will be disposed of “humanely” yea right.