270,000 chickens culled at Miyagi, Chiba farms after bird flu found

A local government in northeastern Japan finished culling roughly 209,000 chickens on Sunday at a poultry farm following the outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5 strain of bird flu. (Photo: Thomas Vlerick/Flickr)

SENDAI—A local government in northeastern Japan finished culling roughly 209,000 chickens on Sunday at a poultry farm following the outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5 strain of bird flu.

Meanwhile, the Chiba prefectural government in eastern Japan, which also detected the virus in chickens at a local farm, finished culling 62,000 chickens Saturday.

The Miyagi prefectural government will bury the dead birds underground and disinfect poultry houses, it said. It initially planned to cull 220,000 chickens but later reduced the number of birds subject to culling by about 11,000.