December 2, 2005

Japanese police probe poultry company over bird flu inspection

Japanese police on Friday searched a poultry company over allegations it rotated chickens among its farms to ensure they passed tests for the bird flu virus, according to media reports.

Police were investigating whether Yokohama-based IKN Egg Farms replaced chickens at one of its farms in Ibaraki prefecture - about 80 kilometres north-east of Tokyo - with birds from other facilities three times in August and September to pass the inspections, Kyodo News agency reported.

The police search involved 25 IKN facilities, including the farm in Ibaraki and the company's headquarters, the Asahi newspaper said.

Ibaraki has been the site of several bird flu outbreaks involving the H5N2 virus, which Japanese officials said has never infected humans, unlike the H5N1 strain that has killed at least 68 people in Asia since 2003.

Hundreds of thousands of birds have been destroyed at dozens of farms in Ibaraki over the past few months, in an effort to contain the spread of the H5N2 virus among poultry.

On Saturday last week, officials announced plans to cull another 110,000 free-range chickens suspected of carrying the virus at a farm in the prefecture.