Almost 200,000 chickens will be culled in Japan's prefecture of Saitama, neighboring Tokyo, due to an outbreak of bird flu, Japanese broadcaster NHK reported on Saturday. On Friday, 76 dead birds were found at one of the poultry farms in the prefecture. In nine of them, genetic analysis confirmed the presence of a highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza. This is the third bird flu outbreak in the prefecture. Since Saturday morning, work has begun on the culling of birds, which will last until December 23. In addition, quarantine was introduced for the transportation of chickens and eggs within a radius of three kilometers (1.9 miles) around the farm, where foci of the disease were found, and the export of chickens and eggs outside the 10-kilometer zone was prohibited.

According to the Japanese Agriculture Ministry, more than 5 million chickens have been culled in the country since the beginning of autumn amid bird flu. Due to the critical situation, an operational headquarters has been created within the ministry in order to develop measures to reduce the spread of the disease. The first cases of avian influenza in Japan were detected in October, with 30 outbreaks in 18 prefectures since then. The rate of spread of the disease this year exceeds the pace of the last record season, when 9.87 million chickens were culled from November 2020 to the end of March 2021.

Credit : Independent News Pakistan-INP