Bird flu strikes third Japanese farm

Japanese authorities began culling chickens at a farm yesterday where the country's third outbreak of highly contagious bird flu has been found.

The H5 strain of the avian flu virus killed about 67,000 birds at the poultry farm in the western prefecture of Kyoto over the past week.

Health officials began destroying the farm's remaining chickens and ordered farms within a 30km radius to stop all shipments of poultry and eggs.

"As of yesterday, around 67,000 chickens have died there. So we will have to cull some 130,000 or so as they had over 190,000 birds," a Kyoto prefectural official said.