January 16, 2007

Japan incinerates 12,000 birds to stem flu outbreak

Authorities began incinerating about 12,000 chickens at a farm in southern Japan on Monday (Jan 15) to try stemming the spread of the country's latest bird flu outbreak.

Separately, the Environment Ministry said it found no signs of the bird flu virus in wild birds in the area, making it unlikely that migratory birds had brought in the disease.

About 4,000 chickens died last week at a farm in Kiyotake town in southern Japan's Miyazaki prefecture. Officials said Saturday that the chickens had died from a bird flu strain from the H5 virus family.

Over the weekend, 8,000 more chickens at the same farm were culled in an effort to contain the disease.

Experts at the National Institute of Animal Health near Tokyo are studying samples to determine whether H5N1 was involved in the Kiyotake farm cases, said Miyazaki prefectural official Makoto Takahashi.

Meanwhile, environment ministry officials have checked wild bird droppings around the affected farm but found "nothing unusual," said ministry official Yoshifumi Kubo.

Monday evening, prefectural officials began burning dead chickens from the farm, Takahashi said.

The government has banned the shipment of eggs or 330,000 chickens from 16 farms within a 6.2-mile radius of the farm, which has been disinfected.