The European Commission is to ban all imports of live birds and feathers from Turkey after positive laboratory tests for avian influenza in the country.
The commission also said it expected to know results of bird flu tests in Romania and Turkey by Wednesday and would act immediately on those findings.
Veterinary surgeon Arif Zorlu
Veterinary experts in Turkey said today the culling of poultry in the northwest of the country would last three weeks and played down fears of an Asian-style epidemic.
Turkey has so far culled at least 2,500 turkeys and chickens after reporting its first outbreak of avian flu at a farm in the district of Manyas, which is near the Aegean and Marmara Seas.
It has imposed a two-mile quarantine zone around the farm, and teams of veterinary experts in white overalls and gloves are burying the slaughtered birds in lime-drenched pits.
"The precautionary measures are continuing but this outbreak of disease is not an epidemic. It is not spreading at the moment," veterinary surgeon Arif Zorlu said.
"To prevent any spread, our technical team in the area is killing poultry and we will continue doing so for 21 days to avert the possibility of an epidemic," he said, adding that the slaughtered birds had not shown any symptoms of illness.
Turkey's Poultry Producers and Breeders Association said samples of the dead birds had been sent to a specialist laboratory in Britain to identify the strain of the virus that killed them. It said the results should be known within a week.
A widespread cull was also being carried out in Romania after it detected an outbreak in the Danube delta, which is home to around 14,000 people.