New bird flu outbreak confirmed along Thai-Lao border

BANGKOK, July 30 (Reuters) The H5N1 bird flu virus has been found in the Thai northeast bordering Laos, prompting culling of 310,000 hens after the virus killed a teenager elsewhere in the country last week, the Agriculture Ministry said today.

''The lab results confirmed last night chickens from a village in Nakohn Panom province have died of bird flu,'' Vice Agriculture Minister Charal Trinwuthipong told Reuters.

''The culling on all 78 farms has already begun and we hope to finish them all by tonight,'' he said.

Charal said the outbreak in Nakohn Panom, 740 km (460 miles) northeast of Bangkok, might be caused by the H5N1-infected egg trays taken from ''the other side'' of the border, in an apparent reference to Laos.

''These egg merchants were too lazy to swap eggs from their trays to those of their customers'. They just swapped the trays and that's how the disease spread to the village,'' he said.

A 17-year-old man died of bird flu on Monday in the northern province of Phichit, where authorities have slaughtered hundreds of birds and restricted poultry movement in a bid to stamp out Thailand's first outbreak in eight months.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Friday that the deadly virus was also found in a poultry farm in Laos, the country's first major outbreak since 2004.

The outbreak occurred on a commercial farm 25 km south of Vientiane where about 2,500 chickens died last week, according to state media reports.

The same farm experienced an outbreak in early 2004 when the virus swept through parts of Asia, including Communist-led Laos where most of its 5.6 million people live in remote rural areas.

The FAO was due to send a bird flu expert to Laos on Tuesday to assess the situation, an FAO official said.

Charal said the ministry instructed governors of provinces bordering Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar to step up surveillance on animals transferred from these countries, where basic health care barely exists outside urban areas.

REUTERS PB BS1244