Dear Animal and Plant Health Agency,

I am writing to make an open government request for all the
information to which I am entitled under the freedom of information act and the environmental information regulations.
In order to assist you with this request, I am outlining my query as specifically as possible.
If however this request is too wide or too unclear, I would be grateful if you could contact me as I understand that under the act, you are required to advise and assist requesters.
Could you please confirm if you have carried put any post mortems on wildfowl from Brookvale Park Birmingham , West Midlands- approximate nat grid reference SP091911 and supply me with the preliminary, supplementary and final reports concerning recent bird deaths .
We have retrieved several birds from this site in the last two months, and allegedly Birmingham City Council forwarded some of them to you for examination. Most were found to be riddled with maggots, the site having fluctuating water levels, and tree debris littering the lake.
It is noted that none appear to have tested positive for avian flu according to your publication list.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk...
Can you CONFIRM that these birds died from avian botulism, and was this a "presumptive diagnosis" without carrying out a test for this summer related illness?
I believe these may have been submitted to the Shrewsbury laboratory since May.
I understand that under the act, I should be entitled to a response
within 20 working days. I would be grateful if you could confirm that you have received
this request. I look forward to hearing from you in the near future via the what do they know website address.

Yours faithfully,

Mr Carroll

Dear Animal and Plant Health Agency,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Animal and Plant Health Agency's handling of my FOI request 'Bird deaths in Brookvale park Birmingham 2023'.

I note that you neither confirm nor deny whether you hold this information on the grounds that to do so would result in the release of personal information. Please review this assessment, as I believe this not to be the case.
The information would not identify any individual and concerns the fate of birds which do not belong to any individual and nor does it belong to anyone else.
In similar previous requests, you did not apply this exemption and I therefore ask why you are doing so now?

It is further noted that you routinely publish specific avian flu data and yet omit any other data concerning bird deaths for context, so that members of the public can gauge the facts about this specific illness, which I believe is being grossly exaggerated by the APHA.
Clearly, you are denying that the birds from this park and city DID NOT die from avian flu as you have not published positive tests on your wild bird AI surveillance reports in the public domain.
I further note that individuals within the hierarchy of the APHA are connected to academic institutions which are receiving money from the public purse for "vaccine research" into this specific illness, and have furthermore appeared in many publications concerning links to human health, again overblown.
A public interest test needs to be applied in this case, as it appears that information for all deaths and causes is being omitted by the APHA in favour of publishing just AI deaths without context. For this reason and the refusal to supply relevant data sets for anything else, one may question the professional integrity of those in the APHA who are connected with research into a specific field they are looking to gain from.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/b...

Yours faithfully,

Mr Carroll