January 23, 2007

 

Jakarta begins mass culling of backyard poultry over the weekend

 

 

Following the announcement on the ban of backyard poultry, the Jakarta city administration culled thousands of chicken, ducks, quails and birds over the weekend.

 

The Jakarta administration issued a regulation last week banning poultry farming in residential areas.

 

Starting February, all backyard poultry rearing will be prohibited. During that period, officials would conduct door-to-door inspections of houses to check for birds and would be authorised to seize and cull all fowls kept in residential areas without paying compensation.

 

Locals handed over more than 1,000 birds to be slaughtered Friday in Pisangan Timur, East Jakarta, as Governor Sutiyoso officially led the first of a series of mass culls in five of the city's municipalities.

 

Later on Sunday, around 10,000 poultry were killed at a vacant field in Mampang, South Jakarta.

 

Indonesia's death toll from the avian flu virus currently stands at 62. Most of the victims are known to have had contact with infected birds.

 

As of January 2007, the East Jakarta municipality had reported three deaths from H5N1 infection.

 

Healthy chickens voluntarily handed over by local residents were slaughtered and returned to be eaten. After the deadline, authorities would take the ones that have not been handed over.

 

The city's Animal Husbandry and Fisheries Agency estimates that birds are kept in about half of the houses in the city, meaning that the city has at least 2.5 million chickens waiting to be culled.

 

Owners of non-commercial poultry kept for research purposes or as pets must obtain health certificates for their animals from the agency. Checks on non-commercial chickens and birds would be done once every six months.

 

Nine other Indonesian provinces hard-hit by bird flu would soon ban chickens from their residential areas.