Poultry Culled to Prevent Bird Flu Outbreak in South Russia

About 500,000 chickens have been culled at a poultry farm in southern Russia where the bird flu virus was found in late November, local authorities said on Wednesday.

Birds started dying at the Gulyai-Borisovskaya poultry farm in the Rostov Region on November 29, and analysis showed traces of the lethal H5N1 strain, which has killed at least 207 people across the globe since it was first discovered in Asia in 2003.

“The entire population of poultry has been culled, and efforts continue to cull birds at private subsidiary holdings in the endangered zone,” the officials said.

The outbreak is the third this year in Russia. The Krasnodar Territory, which is on the route taken by migrating birds in winter, was hit by the H5N1 strain in September, and a total of 230,000 birds were culled at the Lebyazhye-Chepiginskoye poultry farm.

In February, dead poultry with traces of the lethal virus were found in Moscow, eight districts of the Moscow Region and a district in the Kaluga Region. All cases were traced to a single market in southwest Moscow.

Although no cases of human-to-human transmission of avian flu have been reported, scientists fear the virus could mutate into a strain that could pass easily among humans, raising the threat of a global pandemic.

Source RIA Novosti

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