January 25, 2006

Japan starts culling 770,000 birds to stem flu outbreak

Japan has begun slaughtering 770,000 birds in an effort to stamp out a mild form of bird flu in the country's north, an official said Wednesday.

Ibaraki prefecture is culling the birds as a precaution after the H5N2 virus was detected in mid-January at Moriya farm, about 100 kilometres north of Tokyo, local health official Osamu Kamogawa said.

The H5N2 strain of bird flu is less virulent than the H5N1, which has killed at least 80 people in Asia and Turkey since 2003.

About 2.5 million birds have already been destroyed at other Ibaraki farms since June last year following outbreaks of the H5N2 virus.

The start of the cull came after health officials announced earlier this month that 77 people in Japan may have caught the H5N2 strain, which has not previously been known to infect humans.

Those people, mostly chicken farm workers in Ibaraki and Saitama, outside Tokyo, showed evidence of antibodies present to fight the H5N2 virus, the health ministry said on Jan 10.

None of them reported becoming ill, officials said.

Bird flu hit Japan two years ago for the first time in decades. It has had no confirmed human deaths from the H5N1 or H5N2 strains.