Oman has discreetly enhanced its biosecurity measures: on November 3, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Water Resources issued Decision No. 258/2025 prohibiting the import of live birds and poultry-related products from several regions of Europe—including Gelderland (Netherlands), Žilina (Slovakia), West Flanders and Antwerp (Belgium), Nordland (Norway), Zeeland, and Southern Denmark—until the associated animal-health issues are resolved.
The order is surgical rather than sweeping. While it bans live birds and “products, byproducts, and derivatives” from the listed areas, it specifically permits items that have been heat-treated or processed according to the World Organization for Animal Health’s Terrestrial Animal Health Code, acknowledging that properly cooked or processed items pose very little risk. (The Code, for example, recognizes heat treatment to an internal product temperature of at least 74°C as a threshold for safety for certain products.)
So why these regions of Europe? The action follows a general increase in highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) activity across the continent this season. European public authorities are moving quickly to increase controls as the frequency of outbreaks among wild birds and commercial flocks rises, resulting in regional bans on keeping poultry indoors, local depopulation orders, and alarm in the supply chain. Oman’s action should be interpreted as a precautionary firewall to prevent the unanticipated import of infected birds or contaminated commodities during an increased risk period for avian disease.
There are intriguing trajectories to this story. Migratory flyways—the invisible highways used by wild birds—interlink Europe, Asia, and Africa to make seasonal peaks in bird flu a transcontinental phenomenon. That’s one reason why import rules gauge not just countries but sub-national regions when there are outbreaks or focus areas of surveillance. While consumers worry, food safety authorities reassure them that properly processed poultry meat is safe to eat; the risk of disease is to live bird stocks and unprocessed products.
For traders and restaurants in Oman, the immediate implications are tangible: shipments from the named provinces will be inspected, or even rejected, unless there is evidence for the heat-treatment exemption. For those who are concerned with public health, the case provides a neat example of how governments balance trade, food security, and disease prevention in a connected world: a reminder that a virus circulating through a marsh in Europe can reverberate into Muscat policy.
While authorities track outbreaks, and science narrows in on what may be considered “safe processing” moving forward, it is quite conceivable that these types of targeted bans may become a regular tool in national biosecurity tool kits—targeted, temporary, and reliant on data on the backs of birds that, invisibly, fly around the world every year.
