Thursday, December 18, 2014

Japan Orders Culling of Chickens after Bird Flu Strain Found

12/18/2014

TOKYO – Japanese officials on Tuesday ordered the culling of 4,000 chickens after confirming the presence of a highly pathogenic strain of bird flu in three chickens on a farm located in Miyazaki prefecture, authorities said.

The virus was detected in an analysis conducted on the three birds and employees began killing the remaining chickens on the farm estimated to number around 4,000.

Miyazaki is the prefecture with the largest number of poultry farms in the country.

The authorities have also requested nearby farms to limit the movement of their birds to avoid the spread of the virus.

Owners of the farm reported the deaths of 16 birds on Monday, although only three of them were confirmed positive for the virus.

It was the first outbreak of bird flu in Japan since it was last detected in early 2011 when Miyazaki was the main center of infection and which forced the killing of 700,000 birds.

Four years earlier, the region registered several outbreaks of a more lethal variant of the virus, H5N1, which can be transmitted to humans.

Miyazaki prefecture is the largest producer of broiler chicken in the country and this year’s data shows that there were more than 28 million birds of this type in the region, 20 percent of the country’s total, according to data from the Ministry of Agriculture.


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