The outbreak of bird flu in Japan has worsened with the detection of the virus on farms in two other provinces, breaking the country’s record number of poultry exterminations, and the government has ordered that all poultry farms in the country be disinfected, Reuters reported.
The H5 subtype avian influenza has spread to eight of Japan’s 47 provinces and is likely to be spread by wild birds migrating from Europe and Asia.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan has instructed all Japanese farms to disinfect their farms, implement appropriate health protocols, and ensure the proper installation of wild bird conservation nets.
The latest outbreak was confirmed at a laying hen farm in Kinokawa City, Wakayama Prefecture, plus three broiler farms in Oita Prefecture on Kyushu Island.
More than 130,000 chickens were exterminated in both provinces, bringing the total number of extinct chickens to about 2.5 million.
The previous record was the extinction of 1.83 million birds in early April 2010. A total of 2.36 million birds were extinct before the last outbreak. Japan has suspended chicken imports from seven countries, including Germany.
The US Department of Agriculture announced that the population of Japanese broilers in 2019 had reached 138 million heads.