Avian influenza outbreak in Taiwan

An outbreak of avian influenza strain H5N2 has been reported in the Chiayi county at a farm in Puzih. Animal health officials have now imposed a ban on the movement of layer chickens at the farm.

Director of the Chiayi County government’s Animal Disease Control Center, said his agency will not allow the 15,700 chickens at the farm in Puzih to be moved off the premises, but they will be kept alive.

“As it was low-pathogenic, we will not cull the chickens,” he said, but the eggs laid by the chickens will have to be disinfected before they can be sold on the market.

94 poultry farms within a 3 kilometer radius of the farm are being monitored, and no abnormal cases have been reported yet.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine under the Council of Agriculture said Friday that it has filed a report of the Chiayi case with the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).

Bureau officials also said that a farm with 800 chickens in outlying Penghu County reported the sudden death of 150 chickens on Nov. 19 and another 50 the following day. The farm was confirmed to have been infected with H5N2 virus Thursday.

Animal health officials conducted a preventive cull and will monitor chicken farms within a 3 kilometer radius of the site for three months.