Animal health officials have imposed a ban on the movement of chickens at a farm in the south that has been infected with low-pathogenic H5N2 avian influenza.
Wong Yo-chu (翁有助), director of the Chiayi County Government’s Animal Disease Control Center, said his agency would not allow 15,700 chickens at the farm in Puzih (朴子) to be moved off the premises, but they would be kept alive.
“As it is a low-pathogenic [influenza], we will not cull the chickens,” Wong said, adding that eggs laid by the chickens would have to be disinfected before they could be sold on the market.
Ninety-four poultry farms within a 3km radius are also being monitored and no other cases have yet been reported, Wong said.
Meanwhile, the Council of Agriculture’s Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine said that it had filed a report of the Chiayi case with the World Organization for Animal Health.
Bureau officials also said that a farm with 800 chickens in outlying Penghu County reported the sudden death of 150 birds on Monday and another 50 on Tuesday. The farm was confirmed to have been infected with the H5N2 virus on Thursday.
Animal health officials conducted a preventive cull and said they would monitor other chicken farms within a 3km radius for the next three months.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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