Photo/Illutration Epidemic control staff prepare to kill egg-laying hens at a farm in Kawaminami, Miyazaki Prefecture, on Jan. 10. (Provided by Miyazaki prefectural government)

Japan’s worst pathogenic avian influenza epidemic has spread to poultry farms in 23 prefectures, leading to a record 10.08 million chickens culled or scheduled to be killed as of Jan. 10.

“I would like to declare a sort of state of emergency,” agriculture minister Tetsuro Nomura said during a Jan. 9 emergency ministry meeting called to control the epidemic.

Nomura urged poultry growers nationwide and prefectural governments to “take maximum precautions” against bird flu.

The culling number is the first to exceed 10 million in a single season.

At a poultry farm in Kawaminami, Miyazaki Prefecture, staff early on Jan. 10 began killing about 100,000 egg-laying hens suspected of carrying highly pathogenic avian influenza.

It was the 57th bird-flu outbreak reported since the beginning of the season, which started in autumn 2022 and ends in spring this year.

On the previous day, staff at a poultry farm in Shirosato, Ibaraki Prefecture, started culling about 930,000 chickens.

Ibaraki is the leading prefecture in terms of egg-laying hens.

As of February 2022, about 15.3 million egg-laying hens were being raised commercially in the prefecture, according to a farm ministry survey.

Two other bird-flu outbreaks were confirmed in the prefecture, and about 1.12 million birds were killed. 

With the culling of 930,000 birds in Shirosato, the total count will be about 2.05 million, about 10 percent of all egg-laying hens in Ibaraki Prefecture.

In Aomori and Niigata prefectures, large farms with more than 1 million chickens each have been hit hard by the epidemic.

The previous record for worst bird flu epidemic was in the season from autumn 2020 to spring 2021, when 52 outbreaks were confirmed in 18 prefectures and about 9.87 million chickens were killed.

Ministry officials believe that a high proportion of migratory birds, such as ducks, have been infected with the virus and have brought the disease to areas across Japan.

Since the end of 2022, the ministry has taken emergency sanitization measures, both inside and outside of chicken coops, at all outbreak-hit poultry farms in 23 prefectures.

The ministry said in some cases, a sparrow or a rat infected with the virus entered the coop through a rip in the chicken wire or a hole in a wall.

In other cases, the ministry said farm did not take sufficient preventive measures, such as replacing and sanitizing farm workers’ clothes and boots.

(This article was compiled from reports by Hiroyuki Maegawa, Keitaro Nishizaki and Hiroshi Ohno.)

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