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Thursday, Jan 17, 2008
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Four-lakh chickens to be culled

Special Correspondent

KOLKATA: The culling of nearly four-lakh chickens in parts of West Bengal’s Birbhum and South Dinajpur districts began on Wednesday. It was officially confirmed on Tuesday that the deaths of thousands of poultry birds in the area were caused by avian flu of the H5N1 strain.

Culling operations will be extended to the Murshidabad district as chickens have died there also, Minister for Animal Resources Development Anisur Rahaman told The Hindu here.

“This is the first outbreak of the disease in the State that I am informed of and West Bengal is the third State in the country to be affected, after Maharashtra and Manipur,” he said. There were no reports of any person falling ill due to the disease.

General alert

The government has sounded a general alert to prevent the spread of the disease to other districts as well as beyond West Bengal’s borders.

The authorities of Birbhum and South Dinajpur districts have banned the sale of chickens and poultry products for three months in blocks notified as bird flu-hit by the Centre, Mr. Rahaman said.

Buried in pits

The culling operations are being done within a radius of three to five km of the affected farms as per instructions from the Centre, he added. The culled birds are being buried in pits.

The poultries located within a radius of 10 km of the affected farms are being disinfected. Vigil has been stepped up on the State’s border with Bangladesh to prevent the movement of poultry birds from that country where an outbreak of avian flu was reported last year.

The High Security Animal Diseases Laboratory, Bhopal, and the Institute of Virology, Pune, confirmed on Tuesday that the deaths were caused by avian flu.

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