Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine of the Executive Yuan on Thursday confirmed that a strain of H5 avian influenza had hit a poultry farm in Tainan City, with a total of 5,847 chickens being confirmed infected with the virus and were culled Thursday.
The strain of avian influenza identified in Tainan was H5N2, a new highly pathogenic strain of avian flu that had hit a chicken farm in Changhua County last week.
The Tainan chicken farm was the 15th poultry farm across Taiwan that was hit by the bird flu since the beginning of the year, said the Tainan City Animal Health Inspection and Protection Office.
Shih Tai-hua, deputy director-general of the bureau, said the officials have followed the procedures of epidemic prevention measures upon receiving the report of laboratory tests of abnormal poultry deaths from the farm, which was first reported last week. A mass culling operation was implemented, disinfection measures as well as extra surveillance were also in place to prevent the disease from spreading, said the bureau.
Shih added, despite the cold air across Taiwan since January, the bird flu has been under control with no sign of it spreading.
The bureau also called on farm owners to report unusual deaths of animals to the officials. A fine between NT$50,000 and NT$1 million would be imposed on farm owners failing to report abnormalities.