A quarantine worker treats a chicken at a farm in Liaoning Province yesterday. -Xinhua

A temporary checkpoint is set up at Xiaoxia Village in the province’s Heishan County. More than 369,900 chickens were killed in the village after an outbreak of bird flu. — Xinhua

China yesterday reported its fourth outbreak of the dangerous H5N1 bird-flu virus in three weeks, after 8,940 chickens were found dead in a village in the northeast.
Authorities said they found no human cases of the disease.
The outbreak, detected on October 26 in Heishan County in Liaoning Province, prompted local authorities to slaughter 369,900 birds, the Ministry of Agriculture said.
The provincial government told a news conference yesterday morning that the epidemic has been brought under control.
Health authorities became concerned when a large number of chickens were found dead on family farms in a village in Heishan County.
The deaths were reported by poultry breeders to the Liaoning Provincial Animal Health Supervision Administration, which suspected on Tuesday that the problem was related to the avian flu virus.
Samples from the affected birds were sent to China's National Avian Flu Reference Laboratory for confirmation, which determined on Thursday that the deaths were caused by the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus.
Cases of bird flu were found in six towns in Heishan, which is located along the East Asia-Australia route used by migratory birds. More than 20 magpies and other wild birds were also discovered dead in the county, the ministry said.
Experts believe the outbreak may have been caused by the migratory birds, the ministry said.
In addition to the more than 300,000 birds slaughtered within 3 kilometers of the flu sites, nearly 14 million birds have been vaccinated.
The Liaoning provincial government said it implemented a wide range of measures to stop the epidemic from spreading. The stricken areas were blocked and 30 inspection stations and disinfection points were set up around the sites. More than 3,000 workers and 50 tons of disinfectant were put into use.
The provincial government has allocated 5 million yuan (US$625,000) as compensation to farmers who lost chickens to the culling process.
In Hong Kong yesterday, the Health, Welfare and Food Bureau said the government has suspended processing applications for the importation of live poultry and poultry meat from Liaoning.
Hong Kong accepted 13,000 tons of poultry meat from Liaoning through October 25 but has not imported any live poultry from the province.
China earlier reported bird flu outbreaks in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Hunan and Anhui provinces.