Japan confirms H5N1 virus in 2nd bird flu case in southern prefecture
28/1/2007 10:04
The highly virulent H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus was confirmed
yesterday by the agriculture ministry in the second case in a month in southern
Japan's Miyazaki Prefecture.
The ministry confirmed the virus was the H5
variety on Thursday.
Government of the prefecture decided on Friday to cull
5,000 chickens at the virus-hit Sato Broiler farm in the city of Hyuga and cull
another 5,000 chickens on a farm adjacent to it as prevention
measure.
According to local officials, the work at the two farms will take
several days and the culled poultry will be buried in a forest nearby.
About
3,200 birds died in mass from Monday to Thursday at the Sato Broiler farm. It
was the second outbreak of bird flu in a month in Miyazaki Prefecture and the
sixth in Japan since 2004.
Earlier this month, a farm in the town of
Kiyotake, 60 kilometers away from Hyuga, saw 3,500 of its birds killed by the
H5N1 strain of bird flu and had all of its 12,000 birds incinerated.
Bird flu
infections hit dozens of farms in central Japan's Ibaraki prefecture in 2005 and
2006, resulting in the killing of at least 5.8 million
poultry.
Xinhua
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