Japan health officials confirms that bird flu killed 31 chickens at a farm in Okayama Prefecture, Okayama, Japan. Officials have begun sterilizing the farm in Takahashi, western Okayama Prefecture.
All 12,000 birds at the farm will be slaughtered if the final tests come back positive, said the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. Meanwhile, Japan health authorities continued to slaughter chickens at a poultry farm in southern Japan where the H5N1 virus killed 3,000 chickens earlier this week.
About 49,000 birds at the farm in Hyuga in Miyazaki prefecture, Japan’s main chicken-producing region, had been slaughtered. Another 50,000 chickens at a neighboring farm will also be killed as a precaution. Japan has confirmed only one human H5N1 infection, and no human deaths.