Japan culling chickens

Japan has begun slaughtering thousands of chickens in the country's largest poultry farming area to fight an outbreak of bird flu.

The culling of 8600 chickens yesterday in Kagoshima prefecture, on southwestern Kyushu Island, followed two separate outbreaks in the adjacent prefecture of Miyazaki, where 420,000 birds have been slaughtered.

It is Japan's third bird flu outbreak at a poultry farm this year.