KARACHI, 1 March 2006 — Thousands of chickens were yesterday culled at two farms where a mild form of bird flu had been detected, and officials awaited results from tests on whether the strain found could pose a danger to people.
Authorities have completed chicken cull in Charsadda district of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) after detection of bird flu virus, while the process has been in progress at another poultry farm in district Abbottabad, sources said.
Provincial livestock department officials have completed killing of over 10,000 chickens in a farm a Dheri Zardad in district Charsadda. The chickens were disposed off by carbon dyeoxide and carbon monooxide and buried near the farm.
The officials meanwhile were also killing over 16,000 birds at another poultry farm in district Abbottabad, and the cull was to be completed yesterday evening.
“The step had been taken as a precaution and all the birds have been destroyed,” Livestock Commissioner Dr. Muhammad Afzal said, commenting on a cull of chickens at the farms in two cities in NWFP.
“We don’t want the outbreak to spread,” he said. “There is no report of flu from any other farm in the country,” he added.
Initial tests in Pakistan pointed to the presence of the H5 subtype virus at the two farms.
Samples of the infected birds were being sent to laboratories in Britain to check whether they had contracted the deadly H5N1 virus that has wreaked havoc among poultry flocks in much of Asia, parts of Africa and elsewhere. “We are also conducting tests locally but it will take three weeks for us to complete these tests,” Afzal said.
“It’s better to take an international opinion as well, so we have sent the samples to Britain.” Not all H5 varieties are highly pathogenic, but the H5N1 virus is particularly tenacious and poses the greatest risk to people. Scientists fear the H5N1 virus might mutate into a form that passes easily between humans, triggering a pandemic.
The H5N1 strain has killed at least 93 people since late 2003 and the virus has spread rapidly in the past month with cases in wild birds and poultry confirmed across parts of Europe, Africa as well as India and Malaysia.
H5 and H7 subtypes of avian flu can start off in low-pathogenic forms when they first infect poultry flocks and mutate into a highly pathogenic form within a few months if allowed to circulate.
In 2003, a mild strain of bird flu killed at least 3.5 million chickens in Karachi.
News of the latest outbreak hit the poultry industry immediately and prices have dropped 10 percent since Monday as many people stopped buying chicken and eggs. “People are scared,” said Maruf Siddiqui, spokesman for the Pakistan Poultry Farms Association.
