SENDAI, JAPAN - A local government in northeastern Japan finished culling roughly 209,000 chickens on Sunday at a poultry farm following the outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5 strain of bird flu. Meanwhile, the Chiba prefectural government in eastern Japan, which also detected the virus in chickens at a local farm, finished culling 62,000 chickens on Saturday. It initially planned to cull 220,000 chickens but later reduced the number of birds subject to culling by about 11,000. The two governments started culling the chickens on Friday with help from Self-Defence Forces personnel in the latest series of bird flu outbreaks in the country. Since November last year, the H5 virus has been detected at poultry farms in Niigata, Aomori, Hokkaido and Miyazaki prefectures.

Source: Bangkok Post March 26, 2017 09:11 UTC