The figures were obtained by anti-factory farming campaign group Project Slingshot through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request.
Since 2020, bird flu outbreaks have cost the public purse more than £200 million, with approximately £94 million paid in compensation to poultry producers and around £117 million spent on culling birds and associated disease-control operations.
England accounted for approximately £177 million of the total expenditure, followed by £22 million in Scotland, almost £8 million in Wales and more than £4 million in Northern Ireland.
Compensation is paid to producers when healthy birds are destroyed by the government to prevent disease from spreading.
The wider response costs include the killing of affected flocks, known as depopulation, alongside the removal and disposal of carcasses, transport, cleaning and disinfection, veterinary oversight, testing, equipment and security.
According to Project Slingshot, a review of government reports from the same period also found serious biosecurity deficiencies at several affected poultry premises.
These latest figures do not reveal how much public money was associated with farms where biosecurity deficiencies were identified.
Naomi Hallum, chief executive and co-founder of Project Slingshot, which commissioned the investigation, said: “Taxpayers should not be left repeatedly picking up the bill for an industry that has failed to get basic biosecurity right.
“Public authorities must act quickly to contain dangerous outbreaks, but producers should also be held accountable where inspectors find that disease-control measures have not been followed.
“Factory farming creates the ideal conditions for disease to spread: vast flocks of birds packed into intensive sheds, treated as production units rather than living animals, with workers, vehicles and equipment moving between sites. When bird flu enters these systems, it can tear through flocks and condemn hundreds of thousands of birds to suffering and death, with entire sheds sometimes gassed as part of the response.
She continued: “Bird flu is not simply an unfortunate act of nature. It is also a warning about the cruelty and vulnerability of an industrial system built around confining enormous numbers of animals together. Public money should be used to build a safer, kinder and more resilient food system, not continually underwriting the risks and failures of factory farming.”
One of the most significant examples identified by Project Slingshot’s review was a December 2021 outbreak in Lincolnshire, which affected eight premises connected to what a government epidemiological report described as “a large integrated, commercial table egg producing poultry company”.
Officials found that workers did not always change boots or overalls when moving around one site, while “visibly contaminated boots” were present in a staff canteen.
Workers from other farms also used the canteen to clock in and collect protective clothing. The report said the overlap between staff arriving from other sites and those leaving poultry sheds created the potential for “cross-contamination and onward transmission of infection to other farms”.
Campaigners say the documented deficiencies raise questions about whether some businesses took every reasonable measure to prevent infection entering their premises or spreading between farms.
Richard Griffiths, chief executive of the British Poultry Council, said: “Good biosecurity and robust surveillance and reporting are the ways to reduce risk, and ultimately the cost, of avian influenza.”
He said no farm found to have experienced an outbreak because of neglected biosecurity should be permitted to restock until appropriate standards had been met and there was confidence they would be maintained.
Griffiths added that compensation is paid only for healthy birds culled for disease-control purposes.
