Thailand is free of the mysterious
bird flu epidemic that has decimated chicken farms across Asia and has been blamed for human deaths, while more than three million chickens have already been culled across the country to prevent the spread of the disease, authorities said yesterday.
A poultry farmer in Chachoengsao said 300 of his chickens died of what Livestock Development Department officials described as cholera, but they advised him to slaughter and bury his remaining 100,000 chickens.
Other poultry farmers in the province were also advised to cull their chickens by today, after at least two million chickens had already been killed in the operation, the farmer said on condition of anonymity.
A chicken-feed trader in Nakhon Pathom said more than one million chickens had died or were killed as part of prevention programmes in the province.
But many of the dead chickens were sent to market because farmers were afraid they would not get compensation for them, he said.
The Agriculture Ministry blamed the death of some chickens on chicken cholera and bronchitis.
"There has never been an outbreak of the
bird flu in Thailand. We have a programme that calls for regular checks of poultry farms to control diseases," Agriculture Minister Somsak Thepsuthin said.
At least 300,000 chickens on farms all over the country were killed in recent weeks as part of the programme, he said, adding that farm owners would be paid Bt40 for each chicken killed.
His deputy, Newin Chidchob, said no evidence of avian influenza turned up yesterday during an extensive investigation of poultry farms in 23 provinces.
"Not a single case of
bird flu was found," Newin said.
Over 100,000 chickens in Chachoengsao and Nakhon Sawan died of windpipe infection and cholera brought on by the sudden changes in the weather, he said.
In addition to the 300,000 killed as part of the prevention programme, 400,000 chickens have died, Newin said. That number should be considered minimal, given that there are poultry farms in almost all provinces, he said.
The bird flu, or avian influenza, generally just infects birds, but has spread to humans in a few isolated cases and has killed at least three people in Vietnam.
The disease has killed millions of chickens in South Korea, Vietnam and Japan, where officials have ordered mass culls to contain the outbreak.
All border checkpoints have been instructed to block poultry products from those countries, Newin said.
"Certain trade competitors" have been spreading rumours about the
bird flu in order to undermine Thailand's status as a major poultry exporter, he said.
But the country has also benefited from the ongoing outbreak of the disease in other Asian countries, which has left a shortage of chickens on the world market.
The price of chickens has risen from US$1,700 (Bt66,300) per metric tonne before the outbreak, to about $2,400 now, Newin said.
Prime Minister
Thaksin Shinawatra said official tests on the dead chickens found no traces of the disease.
The World Health Organisation advised the government to step up surveillance of human influenza as a precaution.
Dr Bjorn Melgaard, of WHO Thailand, said authorities were conducting random tests on ailing chickens at local poultry farms.
"There have been something like 100 cases, and none of them have been bird flu," he said.
Saowalak Pumyaem,
Pornprapa Rattanadaeng
The Nation
.