HONG KONG -- Agriculture authorities in eastern China's Jiangsu Province said Tuesday 377,000 chickens were culled after samples tested positive for the deadly strain of bird flu, while a rights watchdog claimed as many as 1.2 million chickens were dead.
The Agriculture Ministry said in a statement it received reports on Monday about H5N1 infection among hens in Dongtai city and nearby Hai'an county.
While 377,000 chickens have been culled as a result, there was no bird flu outbreak, the ministry statement said.
The ministry added all poultry and poultry products in the two areas have been isolated and restricted from trade, and the area near the chicken farms in question has been steril-ized.
A state laboratory is further testing the samples to see if the virus has mutated, the minis-try said, adding that preliminary tests found the virus is a different strain from that recently found in southern China.
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In Hong Kong, about 80,000 chickens were slaughtered last week after the government con-firmed that samples tested positive for H5N1.
The Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, a Hong Kong-based whistle-blower on China's rights violations, said as many as 1.2 million chickens in seven villages in Dongtai have died from bird flu since Nov. 5 and accused the government of covering up the outbreak.
Quoting villagers' accounts, the center said the seven villages have bred about 10 million chickens in total, and that sick chickens have been sold to eastern Chinese cities including Shanghai and Shandong Province, and also to southern China's Guangdong Province.
