Discovery of bird-flu virus leads to chicken slaughter

About 20,000 chickens were destroyed on a farm in Fangyuan Township in Changhua County early yesterday morning after the avian-flu virus subtype H5N2 was discovered among the fowl.

Kuo Chou-che (郭丑哲), director of the Changhua County Animal Health Inspection and Quarantine Department, said yesterday that the H5N2 virus was probably brought to Taiwan by migratory birds visiting the Fupao wetlands located in the vicinity of the farm.

As of noon yesterday, his office had not yet decided whether the destroyed chickens should be incinerated or buried in a landfill, Kuo said.

In addition to destroying all the chickens on the affected farm, departmental authorities have also sterilized the farm as well as agricultural land and other properties within a 3km radius

Animal health officials have intensified random inspections of all poultry farms in Changhua County in an effort to prevent the spread of the disease.

Meanwhile, the affected farm will not be allowed to resume operations until two months after it is declared completely free of the virus, Kuo said.

Although it has been known for some time that a wide range of influenza viruses circulate among wild birds, only two types have ever been known to infect humans.

These are two subtypes of the influenza A virus, known as H5N1 and H5N2.

An avian-flu case has never been reported in Taiwan, but monitoring of migratory birds last year led to the discovery of the H5 virus in some of the birds. Fortunately, it was not the H5N1 subtype and it was not transmitted to any birds in Taiwan.

The H5N1 subtype of the virus was found last year in ducks smuggled into Taiwan, but the ducks were destroyed immediately and the virus was contained, Department of Health officials said.

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