Modern Scot reported in August that Scotland’s first bluetongue cluster was confined to four holdings near Newton Stewart. There are now 41 affected holdings, the whole country has been placed inside one restricted zone, and a separate H5N5 avian-influenza outbreak has imposed new legal controls around Ness on Lewis.
Scotland entered October with two separate animal-disease control systems changing at almost the same time. On 3 October the Scottish Government extended the bluetongue Restricted Zone to cover the whole country. A day earlier, highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N5 was confirmed at a premises in Ness on the Isle of Lewis, triggering a 3-kilometre Protection Zone and a 10-kilometre Surveillance Zone around the affected holding.
The diseases are unrelated. Bluetongue is a viral disease of ruminants and camelids transmitted mainly by biting midges. Avian influenza affects birds and is controlled through a different legal and veterinary regime. Their coincidence does not indicate a common outbreak. What has changed is the scale of animal-disease control being applied across Scotland at the beginning of the autumn movement and trading period.
From Four Holdings to 41
The bluetongue position has changed markedly since Modern Scot last examined it in August.
In June, Scotland had not recorded bluetongue through surveillance. The principal concern was movement of susceptible animals into Scotland from infected or restricted areas elsewhere in Great Britain. New movement rules were already affecting cattle, sheep, goats, deer, llamas and alpacas entering the country, while vaccination and testing requirements were beginning to shape decisions about breeding stock, sales and cross-border movements.
By August, that defensive position had broken down. Modern Scot reported on 21 August that Scotland’s first cluster of bluetongue virus serotype 3, or BTV-3, had been identified around Newton Stewart in Dumfries and Galloway. At that stage there were four affected holdings and five confirmed infected animals: four sheep and one bovine. The article identified the central unresolved question as whether the cluster would remain geographically contained or spread more widely through Scotland.
The latest Scottish Government figures provide the answer. As of the 3 October update, 41 Scottish holdings had been confirmed as affected by BTV-3. The total number of confirmed animals stood at 105: 85 cattle and 20 sheep. The concentration remains heaviest in the south-west, but infections are no longer confined to the original Newton Stewart cluster.
Six affected holdings are recorded near Dumfries and another six near Newton Stewart. Five are listed near Castle Douglas and five near Lockerbie, with four near Kirkcudbright. Further holdings have been recorded near Dalbeattie, Twynholm, Annan, Balmaclellan, Cannonbie, Carluke, Gatehouse of Fleet, Gretna and Stranraer. Cases have also appeared substantially further north and east, including individual affected holdings in south Aberdeenshire, Brechin and Ellon.
The Scottish Government says infected farms are initially placed under restrictions, with their extent and duration decided locally by the Animal and Plant Health Agency according to risk. Infected animals are generally required to remain on the farm for at least 60 days, although healthy animals on an affected holding may in many circumstances continue to be traded within the restricted zone or moved under licence outside it. Animals showing clinical signs must not be moved.
The Whole of Scotland Is Now One Restricted Zone
The legal geography changed on 3 October.
Until then, Scotland had operated with a bluetongue Restricted Zone concentrated in the south-west and a disease-free area covering the rest of the country. Movements out of the affected zone could therefore require licences, testing, vaccination or other conditions depending on the animal and purpose of movement.
That internal boundary has now gone. The whole of Scotland is one bluetongue Restricted Zone. The declaration applies nationally and carries legal force. Livestock keepers are required to maintain an inventory of susceptible animals, recording how many are alive, dead or infected or likely to be infected, and to keep that inventory updated as animals are born or die. Animals showing clinical signs cannot be moved. The Scottish Government states that failure to comply with the measures can lead to prosecution.
In practical movement terms, the national designation also removes some of the bureaucracy that had existed while part of Scotland retained a different disease status. From 3 October there are no bluetongue controls on movements of susceptible animals between the Restricted Zones of Scotland, England and Wales because those territories now share the same status.
The Scottish Government said the change had been agreed with industry representatives including NFU Scotland, the National Sheep Association, the Scottish Beef Association, the Institute of Auctioneers and Appraisers Scotland and Quality Meat Scotland. The stated purpose was to simplify livestock trading before the busy autumn movement period.
That makes the new system superficially less restrictive for some farmers. Animals can move more freely between areas that are now treated as sharing the same disease status. But the administrative relaxation follows a much larger geographic change in the disease-control position: Scotland no longer contains a bluetongue-free internal area recognised separately from the infected south-west.
The Scottish Government had already concluded by early September that the virus was circulating in the south-west rather than appearing only as isolated imported infections. On 10 September the earlier Temporary Control Zone there was converted into a Restricted Zone after officials said there was evidence of circulation in the affected area.
Three weeks later, the boundary around that area became obsolete.
Vaccination Rules Have Changed With the Map
A second legal instrument was issued on 2 October, immediately before the nationwide Restricted Zone came into force.
Scottish Ministers declared the whole of Scotland an area in which voluntary vaccination against bluetongue is permitted. The declaration was made under the Bluetongue (Scotland) Order 2012 following what ministers describe as a specific risk assessment. It replaces an earlier vaccination declaration made in April 2025.
Vaccination must use products meeting the conditions in the declaration. For BTV-3 vaccines, farmers must follow the specified schedule and veterinary or manufacturer instructions. Animals without an approved means of identification must be identified, and written or digital records must be kept for every vaccinated animal and made available to an inspector if requested.
The current position is therefore different from the one Modern Scot described at the beginning of June. At that time Scotland was still outside the infected area and the main controls were designed to stop infection entering with livestock. By August the virus had been confirmed on Scottish holdings. By October, the disease had spread sufficiently for the entire country to operate under one restricted-zone status.
Bluetongue does not infect people. The Scottish Government states that there are no human-health implications from the disease. Its consequences instead fall on animal health, fertility, productivity, farm management, trade and movement.
A Separate Outbreak Begins on Lewis
While Scotland’s bluetongue regime was being widened nationally, a second animal-health event began more than 200 miles from the south-western centre of the BTV-3 outbreak.
On 2 October, highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N5 was confirmed at a premises in Ness on the Isle of Lewis. A 3-kilometre Protection Zone and 10-kilometre Surveillance Zone were imposed around the premises.
The restrictions apply to premises falling wholly or partly inside the zones. Bird keepers within them must comply with disease-control measures intended to prevent infection spreading through poultry, captive birds, equipment, vehicles and other potential routes. The Scottish Government states that any suspicion of avian influenza in kept birds must be reported immediately to the Animal and Plant Health Agency.
The Lewis infection is the first confirmed premises outbreak of the United Kingdom’s 2026–27 avian-influenza season. Following confirmation of the H5N5 case, Great Britain lost its official freedom from highly pathogenic avian influenza.
That status is used in international animal-health reporting and can become relevant to certification and trade, although the practical consequences depend on the rules applied by individual trading partners and cannot be assumed from the loss of status alone.
Ness Has Been Here Before
The outbreak is not the first time highly pathogenic avian influenza has reached Lewis, or Ness itself.
Scottish Government records show a succession of H5N1 premises outbreaks on Lewis during 2022 and 2023. A case was confirmed on Great Bernera in October 2022. During August and September 2023, infected premises were recorded near Stornoway, at Lower Barvas, at Ness, at a second Lower Barvas premises and at Sheshader.
The earlier Ness case was confirmed on 25 August 2023. Restrictions associated with that outbreak were eventually lifted on 23 October. Lower Barvas had cases on 22 August and 15 September that year, while the Sheshader outbreak was confirmed on 27 September.
The subtype now confirmed at Ness is different. The 2023 Lewis premises outbreaks were H5N1. The current outbreak is H5N5.
H5N5 is not new to Britain, however. The Scottish Government’s wild-bird avian-influenza response plan records that H5N5 had been detected sporadically in wild birds and that poultry and mammalian cases were identified in England during the 2024–25 period. The plan says H5 viruses in the clade circulating in Great Britain have continued to be found in wild-bird populations.
The same document says the zoonotic risk from the clade of H5Nx viruses detected in Great Britain remained very low at the time of that assessment.
The Food-Safety Position Has Not Changed
The confirmation of H5N5 in poultry does not mean ordinary poultry products have become unsafe to eat.
The Food Standards Agency’s risk assessment found that the likelihood of consumers acquiring avian influenza from handling and consuming commercial chicken or turkey was negligible, with low uncertainty. Its assessment also concluded that thoroughly cooked poultry products, including eggs, presented a very low risk.
The scientific basis is straightforward. Avian-influenza viruses are susceptible to heat, and recorded human infections have generally been associated with close and direct contact with infected birds rather than consumption of poultry products.
The principal controls around Ness are therefore animal-disease controls: locating infection, restricting potentially risky movements and preventing spread among kept birds and surrounding flocks.
Two Different Disease Systems, Two Different Maps
The two outbreaks now create very different regulatory maps across Scotland.
Bluetongue has moved in the direction of nationalisation. A disease that Modern Scot reported in June as still outside Scotland, and in August as concentrated around four holdings near Newton Stewart, is now being managed under a single Scotland-wide Restricted Zone. The number of confirmed affected holdings has increased tenfold from the four recorded in Modern Scot’s August report to 41 in the latest government return.
Avian influenza is being managed in the opposite way: through tightly drawn local zones around a single confirmed premises at Ness. The 3-kilometre and 10-kilometre rings are intended to contain a newly identified outbreak while surveillance establishes whether there has been wider spread.
The evidence to watch next is different for each disease. For bluetongue, the significant question is whether infections continue appearing beyond the existing 41 holdings after Scotland has moved into its low-transmission period, and whether the current national zone remains necessary into 2027. For H5N5, the immediate question is whether testing identifies additional infected premises or whether the Ness outbreak remains confined within the existing control area.
Scotland has therefore entered autumn with one animal disease no longer being managed through an internal Scottish boundary, and another newly contained inside two concentric zones on Lewis. The next updates from APHA and the Scottish Government will show whether either map has to change again.
Sources
Bluetongue Restricted Zone in Scotland
Scottish Government, updated 3 October 2026
https://www.gov.scot/publications/bluetongue-control-zone-scotland/
Bluetongue: Latest Situation
Scottish Government, updated 3 October 2026
https://www.gov.scot/publications/bluetongue/pages/latest-situation/
Bluetongue Movement Restrictions for Animals and Germinal Products, and Licensing
Scottish Government, updated 3 October 2026
https://www.gov.scot/publications/bluetongue/pages/bluetongue-movement-restrictions-for-animals/
Bluetongue Restricted Zone Extended to Cover All of Scotland
Scottish Government, 1 October 2026
https://www.gov.scot/news/bluetongue-restricted-zone-extended-to-cover-all-of-scotland/
Bluetongue Restricted Zone Established in South-West Scotland
Scottish Government, 8 September 2026
https://www.gov.scot/news/bluetongue-restricted-zone-established-in-south-west-scotland/
Bluetongue: Declaration
Scottish Government, 2 October 2026
https://www.gov.scot/publications/bluetongue-general-licence/
Bluetongue: How to Spot and Report the Disease
Scottish Government, updated 3 October 2026
https://www.gov.scot/publications/bluetongue/
Avian Flu (Bird Flu): Ness, Isle of Lewis (AIV 2026/20)
Scottish Government, 2 October 2026
https://www.gov.scot/publications/avian-flu-bird-flu-ness-isle-of-lewis-aiv-2026-20/
Avian Influenza (Bird Flu) Outbreaks
Scottish Government, updated 2 October 2026
https://www.gov.scot/publications/avian-influenza-outbreaks/
Avian Influenza (Bird Flu): Previous Outbreaks — Season 2022 to 2023
Scottish Government, updated 16 March 2026
https://www.gov.scot/publications/avian-influenza-bird-flu-previous-outbreaks/pages/season-2022-to-2023/
Bird Flu (Avian Influenza): Latest Situation in England
Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs and Animal and Plant Health Agency, updated 3 October 2026
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/bird-flu-avian-influenza-latest-situation-in-england
Scottish Wild Bird High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza Response Plan
Scottish Government, 31 March 2025
https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-wild-bird-high-pathogenicity-avian-influenza-response-plan/
A Qualitative Assessment of the Risk of Acquiring Avian Influenza from Poultry and Game Bird Meat and Poultry Products
Food Standards Agency, 2023
https://www.food.gov.uk/research/foodborne-pathogens/a-qualitative-assessment-of-the-risk-of-acquiring-avian-influenza-from-poultry-and-game-bird-meat-poultry-products
