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The Philippines said on Wednesday (July 29, 2020) that it had slaughtered about 39,000 chickens at a poultry farm north of the capital, Manila, to prevent bird flu, more than four months after the infection was caught in a neighboring province.
The Department of Agriculture (DA) Bureau of Animal Industrial Influenza has detected the presence of a highly contagious H5N6 subtype of the virus on an egg-producing farm in San Luis, Pampanga Prefecture.
Upon confirming the report, a team of veterinarians and animal health officers had immediately implemented emergency control measures, culling 38,701 poultry and disposing of the carcasses, the DA said in a statement.
In March, the DA detected an avian flu outbreak involving the same virus in a quail farm in Jaen municipality in Nueva Ecija province, where about 1,500 quails had died and some 12,000 others had been culled.
Initial investigation by the DA showed the presence in San Luis town of migratory birds, which has been associated with bird flu outbreaks in many countries, including the Philippines.
The DA said broilers, the primary source of poultry meat, were not affected by the latest outbreak.
Source: Online/SZK
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