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Bird-flu die-off at Ukraine poultry farm

Business Materials 18 January 2008 13:17 (UTC +04:00)

( dpa ) - Dozens of chickens at a Ukrainian poultry farm have died from the H5N1 bird-flu virus, the Interfax news agency reported Friday.

Inspectors found 153 birds dead from the disease at the Lobzenko poultry factory in a central region of the Black Sea peninsula Crimea.

A quarantine was in effect around the plant and the nearby Rivne village. The bird-flu outbreak was the first reported in Ukraine in 2008.

Health workers were testing birds at the Lobzenko factory, and mandatory destruction of thousands of other chickens potentially exposed to the disease was likely, according to the report.

The processing plant currently contains some 25,000 birds, an official from Ukraine's Ministry of Emergency Situations said.

The last incident of bird flu in Ukraine was registered in July 2006, when health inspectors detected the disease in domestic poultry in the eastern Sumy region, resulting in the destruction of more than 12,000 chickens, ducks and geese.

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