Japan orders slaughter of 1 million chickens over bird flu
Tokyo, Nov 4 (EFE).- Japanese authorities Friday ordered the slaughter of nearly 1 million chickens from several farms in the Ibaraki prefecture, after detecting numerous dead birds, whose analyzes revealed positives for bird flu.
This is the first outbreak in the Kanto region this season and affects some 27 farms, where in addition to slaughtering chickens, eggs will also be discarded, in a prefecture that is the first to produce them in the country, public network NHK reported Friday.
In the prefecture of Okayama, numerous dead birds were also detected Thursday in a farm with a capacity for some 510,000 chickens, for which access to the area was restricted pending test results.
The news comes after authorities Tuesday ordered the slaughter of another 40,000 chickens on a farm in the west of the archipelago after detecting numerous dead birds the day before, the tests of which were also positive for bird flu.
The birds belonged to a poultry farm in the city of Kanonji, in Kagawa prefecture, around which an exclusion area of three kilometers has been established, NHK reported.
Kagawa prefecture was the scene of a series of highly contagious bird flu outbreaks two years ago that led to the culling of some 1.8 million birds. EFE
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