UK confirms bird flu in dead chickens

LONDON, Apr 26 (Reuters) Dead chickens on a farm in eastern England have tested positive for bird flu, the British government said today.

First tests suggest they had the H7 strain of the disease, and not the H5N1 strain, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said in a statement. H5N1 has killed more than 100 people since late 2003, most of them in Asia.

''Further tests are being carried out to determine the strain of the virus and more will be known tomorrow,'' it said.

Other birds at the farm are to be killed as a precaution and restrictions are in place.

Earlier this month, Britain confirmed its first case of H5N1 bird flu in a wild bird when a dead swan was found in eastern Scotland.

An outbreak of the H7N7 bird flu strain in the Netherlands in 2003 led to the culling of 30 million birds, over a third of all Dutch poultry at a cost of hundreds of millions of euros.

REUTERS SRS RAI0343