November 26, 2012

Taiwan authorities limit chicken movements in farm

Taiwan's animal health authorities have issued a ban on chicken movements at a farm in the country's southern region after low-pathogenic H5N2 avian influenza has been found there.

Wong Yo-chu, director of the Chiayi County government's Animal Disease Control Centre, said his agency will not allow the 15,700 chickens at the farm in Puzih to be moved off the premises, but they will be kept alive.

"As it was low-pathogenic, we will not cull the chickens," Wong said, but the eggs laid by the chickens will have to be disinfected before they can be sold on the market.

All 94 poultry farms within a three-kilometer radius of the farm are being monitored, and no abnormal cases have been reported yet, Wong said.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine under the Council of Agriculture said that it has filed a report of the Chiayi case with the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).

Bureau officials also said that a farm with 800 chickens in outlying Penghu County reported the sudden death of 150 chickens on November 19 and another 50 the following day. The farm was confirmed to have been infected with H5N2 virus.

Animal health officials conducted a preventive cull and will monitor chicken farms within a three-kilometer radius of the site for three months.