September 27, 2007

Russia culls 250,000 birds from latest outbreak

A bird flu outbreak in Russia's Krasnodar Territory earlier this month has forced the culling of 250,000 birds, Russia's agriculture watchdog said September 26.

A total of 170,600 birds were slaughtered at the Lebyazh-Chepiginskoye farm and the remaining 77,500 are due to be culled in the near future, Alexander Skorikov, the head of the animal health department at Russia's agriculture watchdog said.

In the early part of the month, about 22,000 birds were culled at the farm after a regional laboratory identified the lethal H5N1 virus in dead birds at the farm.

Although massive, the latest cullings were an significant improvement over the past.

Russia culled 1.3 million birds in 2005 due to bird flu. That figure was slightly reduced to 1.04 million the following year.

This year the figure had dropped to around 260,000.

Krasnodar Territory lies on the route of migrating birds in winter and is thus subject to a higher risk of bird flu.