Initial tests showed yesterday that Japan's possible third outbreak of bird flu had likely spread further as chickens were shipped from a suspect farm even while birds were dying off in the thousands.
The suspected new cases were in five birds among 15,500 chickens that were shipped for slaughter from a farm at which two birds initially tested positive Friday, said an official in Hyogo prefecture, some 450km west of Tokyo.
It could take until Tuesday to confirm the tests.
The birds were shipped to a Hyogo processing plant from Asada Nosan Funai Nojo farm in Tanba town, Kyoto prefecture, on Wednesday and Thursday. On those days 9,300 birds at the farm had dropped dead, the official said.
Some 29,000 of 200,000 birds at the Tanba farm have died in the past 10 days, including about 10,000 Saturday morning.
"Despite knowing that the number of dying birds was increasing from February 20th, the farm still shipped birds to Hyogo on the 25th and 26th," livestock official Yoshiro Torikai said.
A fourth possible case of the disease was found Wednesday in a single chicken raised with five bantams at a private home in central Nagano prefecture.
Conflicting early test results however meant confirmation could take several days, a local official said.
Kyoto governor Keiji Yamada told reporters Saturday the prefecture was studying whether the Tanba farmer could be punished for shipping birds despite knowing of the mass die-off.
"I cannot be satisfied that shipments occurred while the number of chickens dying was increasing," he said, adding he would ask the farmer to slaughter the remaining birds even before the initial tests were confirmed, or otherwise.
A prefectural livestock official said farmers were required to inform authorities immediately if they detected an outbreak of bird flu.
Japan reported its first outbreak of bird flu since 1925 on January 11 at a poultry farm on the southwestern tip of the archipelago's main Honshu island where 35,000 birds either died or were culled because of the virus.
The second case was found on Feb. 17 in Oita prefecture on Kyushu island, also in southwestern Japan, in a group of 13 bantams and a duck.
In both cases the virus was identified as the virulent H5N1 strain which has affected 10 Asian nations, killing at least 22 people in Vietnam and Thailand.
Japan is struggling to contain the disease. It had been prepared to declare itself free of bird flu on Feb. 19, which marked 28 days after the first case was contained, only to have its hopes dashed by the second case.
The country, which imported some 220,000 tonnes of chicken meat in the year to March last year, had banned poultry from Cambodia, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Italy, Laos, Macau, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam and some parts of the US, where bird flu outbreaks have been reported.
Late Friday Japan lifted a ban on Thai imports of cooked chicken from four select factories that had been checked by a Japanese team of inspectors.
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