The effects of enteric diseases are especially visible in the intensive poultry industry. The consequences, such as decreased weight gain, increased morbidity and mortality, poor feed conversion and increased use of therapeutic antimicrobial treatments, all contribute to important economic losses. Different terms have been used to describe enteric disease syndrome: runting-stunting syndrome of broilers (RSS), poult enteritis complex (PEC), and poult enteritis mortality syndrome (PEMS). However, none of these descriptions relates to the specific infectious agents, and numerous viruses have been associated with them. However, astroviruses seem to be the most frequently involved in enteritis [2, 8, 12, 13, 24] . Among five different astroviruses identified in avian species, three types have been detected in turkeys. Diarrhoea and increased mortality in turkey poults associated with the presence of an astrovirus, now called turkey astrovirus type 1 (TAstV-1), were described for the first time in 1980 in the United Kingdom [16] and, five years later, in the USA [24, 25] . Turkey astrovirus type 2 (TAstV-2), which is antigenically and genetically distinct from the previously identified TAstV-1, was isolated in the USA in 1996 [13] . With regard to ANV, initially antibodies against this virus were only found in turkey flocks in the UK and Japan [17, 28] . Subsequently, the virus was detected using molecular techniques in intestinal contents of healthy and diseased poults in the USA, but its prevalence is low [5, 20, 21] .