An outbreak of H5N2 bird flu has been confirmed at a farm in the southern Pingtung County.
The outbreak, which began in early December, was finally confirmed Friday after serum tests on a sampling of the farm’s chickens. All of the farm’s 12,000 chickens have to be destroyed in an effort to prevent the disease from spreading. Local agricultural authorities have also placed the farm under quarantine and will introduce new chickens after 21 days to ensure that the outbreak has ended.
Director General of the Council of Agriculture’s Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine, Chang Su-san, said Friday that chicken feed was initially thought to be the cause of the flu-like symptoms the chickens displayed in early December. However, she said that authorities began to suspect bird flu when large numbers of chickens began to die by the middle of the month.
Meanwhile, the inspection and quarantine bureau reminded the public that H5N2 is not transmissible to humans and that a similar outbreak in 2008 was successfully brought under control.