Disposal of Birds Continues in Japan after Avian Flu Outbreaks

Niigata/Aomori, Dec. 1 (Jiji Press)--The Niigata and Aomori prefectural governments continued work on Thursday to dispose of a total of 550,000 birds at three poultry farms there, following the outbreaks of avian influenza caused by highly pathogenic viruses. Niigata prefectural government officials and Self-Defense Forces troops dispatched to the central Japan prefecture are working around the clock to cull and bury hundreds of thousands of birds at farms in the village of Sekikawa and the city of Joetsu, which are not located near each other. At the Joetsu chicken farm, the work to dispose of some 230,000 birds began early Thursday, after the outbreak was confirmed by the prefectural government on Wednesday night. The Niigata government hopes to finish the work at the farm on Sunday although there is a lack of bags for the culled birds at present. At farms within a 3-kilometer radius of the affected farm, tests were conducted to check whether there are any birds with flu. A team sent by the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry worked on discovering the transmission route. At the farm in Sekikawa, the work was finished for 275,320 of some 310,000 chickens as of 6 p.m. Thursday (9 a.m. GMT). If the work goes on at the current pace, the whole of the process and sterilization are expected to finish on Saturday, officials said. All of some 18,360 birds at the duck farm in the city of Aomori, northeastern Japan, have already been culled, and work to bury them and sterilization is expected to end by Friday morning. On Thursday morning, 19 chickens at a farm in the city of Nagaoka in Niigata Prefecture were found dead. A simple test was conducted on five of them, and all tested negative for avian flu, according to authorities. Also on Thursday, the agriculture ministry said that the H5N6 avian flu virus has been detected in dead birds tested at the Sekikawa and Aomori farms. Infections with the virus are spreading in South Korea. The virus has also been found in dead wild birds in Japan recently. END