Japan has begun culling poultry at a poultry farm in the western region of Kyoto after confirming the country’s third outbreak of the highly contagious bird flu virus.
Around 67,000 birds at the poultry farm were found to have died from the H5 strain of the virus over the last week.
“As of yesterday [Saturday], around 67,000 chickens have died there. So we will have to cull some 130,000 or so as they had over 190,000 birds,” a Kyoto prefectural official was quoted by Reuters as saying.
Two outbreaks of the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of bird flu have been confirmed so far this year in Japan, one in Yamaguchi and one in Oita. Officials are waiting for test results to determine if this latest outbreak is also the H5N1 strain, which has killed more than 20 people in Asia in recent months.
