Indonesia finds bird flu, millions of chickens die

3.00pm

JAKARTA - Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous nation, has confirmed a bird flu outbreak among chickens but found no evidence the disease has spread to humans, senior Agriculture Ministry officials said on Sunday.

"It's been confirmed avian influenza exists, but no human cases so far," animal health director Tri Satya Putri Naipospos told reporters at a news conference.

Indonesia previously said it was free of the flu and blamed the deaths of thousands of chickens in parts of East Java and the tourist centre of Bali in the past three months on Newcastle disease, a virus harmless to humans that does not affect the safety of poultry meat.

"Since November, approximately 4.7 million chickens have died, and 40 per cent of them were infected both with avian influenza and Newcastle disease," the Agriculture Ministry's director-general of animal husbandry, Sofjan Sudardjat, said at the news conference.

That number of dead chickens would represent about five per cent of Indonesia's hens, a ministry official told Reuters.

An outbreak of a highly infectious avian flu strain has killed six people in Vietnam and two human cases have been confirmed in Thailand. Millions of chickens have been slaughtered across Asia.

At least two strains of avian flu have been associated with disease in humans.

Bird flu can be a mild disease that has only minor effects or a highly infectious strain that is fatal.

Sudardjat said the flu had hit almost all of the sprawling archipelago, and experts would carry out tests on Wednesday to identify the type of disease and level of danger to humans.

"Thus far, the government guarantees that the public does not need to worry about consuming poultry meat, eggs, and other poultry products so long as they originate from healthy chickens and have been cooked properly," Sudardjat said.

The government has increased biosecurity at farms to halt the spread, officials said.

Bird migration, smuggled vaccine and poultry husbandry or intentional contamination were possible ways the disease could reach the country, Sudardjat said.

He said Jakarta was preparing a law that would punish anyone caught spreading the virus deliberately with a minimum five-year sentence.

Singapore and Malaysia have suspended imports of Indonesian poultry because of the flu scare, an official said.

Indonesian produces about one million tonnes of chicken meat a year, mostly for the domestic market, leaving less than one per cent for exports.

- REUTERS