New outbreak of bird flu in Japan
A farm in western Japan's Takahashi city, Okayama Prefecture, saw 17 of its chickens die in the last two days in maybe another bird flu case, the Japanese agricultural ministry said on late Saturday.
The highly virulent H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus was confirmed earlier in the day by the ministry in the second case in a month in southern Japan's Miyazaki Prefecture.
Earlier this month, some 4,000 chickens died from H5N1 in another town in Miyazaki, about 900km southwest of Tokyo.
Authorities began slaughtering the remaining 49,000 chickens at the Hyuga farm on Friday, prefectural official Hisao Takase said.
About 21,000 birds had been destroyed by yesterday afternoon, Takase added. Another 50,000 chickens at a neighbouring farm will also be killed as a precaution, Takase said.
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