BALIKESIR, Turkey
A poultry farm in northern Turkey is under quarantine after traces of bird flu virus were found, a local official said on Sunday.
Ali Manti, the governor of Bandirma on Turkey’s Marmara coast, said the disease was detected in Balikesir province.
He did not say whether the H5N1 strain of bird flu, which can infect and kill humans, had been detected.
Teams from the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock are culling chickens and disinfecting the farm, Manti said, without specifying the number of infected birds.
On Monday, the government announced that bird flu had been detected following the deaths of 40,000 chickens in Bandirma over the previous four months.
Also on Monday, Turkey reported an outbreak of H5N1 bird flu virus in the northern province of Kastamonu, the first case of the highly infectious strain in seven years.
H5N1 bird flu first infected humans in 1997 and has since spread from Asia and caused hundreds of human deaths.
