December 20, 2007

Russia culls 500,000 poultry to prevent bird flu outbreak

About 500,000 chickens have been slaughtered at a poultry farm in southern Russia where the bird flu virus was found in late November, local authorities said on Wednesday (December 19).

Birds started dying at the Gulyai-Borisovskaya poultry farm in the Rostov Region since November 29 where traces of the lethal H5N1 strain are present.

The outbreak is the third this year in Russia. The Krasnodar Territory, which is on the route taken by migrating birds in winter, was hit by the H5N1 strain in September, and a total of 230,000 birds were culled at the Lebyazhye-Chepiginskoye poultry farm.

The virus started killing poultry in February where dead chickens were found in Moscow, followed by eight districts in Moscow and a district in the Kaluga Region. All cases were traced to a single market in southwest Moscow.

Although no cases of human-to-human transmission of avian flu have been reported, scientists fear the virus could mutate into a strain that could pass easily among humans, raising the threat of a global pandemic.