Japan tests find no spread of bird flu

TOKYO, Jan 15 (Reuters) Japan's farm ministry has not found any new cases of bird flu after confirming an outbreak at a poultry farm in the southwest of the country at the weekend, the vice farm minister today said.

Tests have shown that the deaths of some 3,800 chickens in Miyazaki prefecture last week were due to the lethal H5 subtype of the virus, although further checks are needed to determine whether it is the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain.

''We are conducting checks in every prefecture and area, but there has so far been no report of any abnormality,'' Vice Farm Minister Yoshio Kobayashi told a news conference.

He said a team of experts would be meeting later today to assess the situation, and an interim report on the findings was due to be put together tomorrow.

The ministry has restricted the movement of people and goods from farms located within a 10 km radius of the affected poultry farm in Miyazaki prefecture on the southernmost main island of Kyushu.

A local government official said all the birds raised on the infected farm had been killed on Sunday.

Miyazaki is Japan's top chicken-breeding region and was raising about 18.4 million birds as of February 1, 2006.

Outbreaks of the lethal H5N1 strain of bird flu were last reported in Japan between January and March 2004.

The last report of an outbreak of the weaker H5N2 strain was made in January 2006.

REUTERS SY VC1422