Pakistan confirms bird flu strain on poultry farms

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani police sealed off two poultry farms and workers using poison gas started slaughtering 25,000 chickens on Monday after the mild H5-type bird flu was found in flocks, officials said.   

Tests are underway to determine if the virus found in the chickens in northwest Pakistan bordering Afghanistan is the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain, Agriculture Ministry spokesman Mohammad Afzal said.   

"We have found H5-infected birds at two farms at Charsadda and Abbottabad districts in North West Frontier Province and requested the owners to cull all the birds," Afzal said.   

"We have not ruled out that it is H5N1 but it appears to be a low-pathogenic strain," he said.   

Pakistan had sent samples from infected birds for testing at the EU Reference Laboratory for avian influenza in Weybridge, England, and results were expected "within a week or so", he said.   

The supervisor of one of the affected farms said 2,000 egg-laying hens had died during the past week, although he insisted it was a normal rate.   

"Police have been deployed outside the farm and farm workers are also not being allowed to go out," Alamgir Khan, of the Gul Poultry Farm at Charsadda, said.   

Both the farms have been quarantined, said Rana Mohammed Akhlaq, livestock commissioner at the agriculture ministry. There was no ban yet on the movement of poultry, he added. He said the poultry industry would decide whether to kill chickens in the infected area, although slaughter would be mandatory if the virus turns out to be H5N1.   

"It will benefit the industry if they cull the infected birds and we hope they will do it voluntarily to contain the virus," Akhlaq said.   

Pakistan Poultry Association chairman Raza Mahmood Khursand said workers had started killing birds at the farm in Abbottabad, which had around 15,000 birds. The other farm has around 10,000 chickens.   

"We are sure the chickens are safe but our ultimate goal is the health of the nation," he said.   

The poultry industry had started ordering bird flu vaccine from abroad and would launch a "full-blown" vaccination campaign as soon as it got the first consignment, he added.   

Pakistan last week banned imports of poultry and live birds from neighbouring India and Iran, as well as France, after all three countries reported H5N1 cases. The broad H5 virus category only kills birds, unlike the highly pathogenic H5N1 sub-type of the virus that has claimed about 90 human lives in Asia and Turkey.