The government will cut taxes and fees for hard-hit poultry businesses and individuals, as two new bird flu outbreaks were reported in Xinjiang.

Farmers have complained that massive culling and lack of sufficient compensation is ruining their livelihood.

China will cut taxes and administrative fees of poultry businesses and individuals to boost the fight against bird flu.

At an executive meeting of the State Council, or China's Cabinet, presided over by Premier Wen Jiabao, members decided that poultry processing and marketing businesses will be exempted from the 2005 corporate tax and enjoy value-added tax rebate as well as an export tax rebate.

Businesses and individuals in the poultry industry will get reductions or exemptions in land use tax, real estate tax and vehicle use tax during the first half of 2006.

These decisions are among the measures adopted to check the spreading of the bird flu.

China announced on Tuesday that it would vaccinate all of its 14 billion farm birds following 11 outbreaks in four provincial regions in the past month.

The government promised continued fiscal subsidies for vaccinating and culling poultry in outbreak areas and vowed to foot the bill for vaccines.

Banks are ordered to extend the time due for capital loans in poultry breeding and processing businesses. The government has waived loan default fines for those who default repayment during the bird flu outbreaks.

Employees laid off by affected businesses will have unemployment insurance or subsistence allowances equivalent to those of urban residents.

No region is permitted to block or hinder distribution of chickens, ducks, geese and other poultry to non-outbreak areas, as a move to protect a normal market order.

The meeting also called for a change in current individual household breeding to a collective model for unified vaccination and management.

Around the country, millions of chickens, ducks and other birds have been culled to curb the spreading of the virus, which can be contained through vaccinations, disinfection and poultry management.

China has strengthened supervision and monitoring of the bird flu as new cases of the outbreak were reported in two counties of northwestern Xinjiang on Tuesday.

China's National Avian Flu Reference Laboratory confirmed the virus, which was found in the dead fowls from some family farms in Zepu County and Urumqi County, both in southern Xinjiang, was the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, said the agriculture ministry on Tuesday.

In the two bird flu-hit counties, 322,500 family birds within a radius of 3 kilometers have been culled, and poultry markets within 10 kilometers have been closed.