The Hyogo Prefectural Government said Saturday that preliminary tests show that live chickens shipped from a Kyoto Prefecture farm where an outbreak of avian influenza is suspected do have the virus.
It is the first time that tests have returned positive for chickens that had been moved to another place from where the disease is believed to have occurred.
The chickens were among a batch shipped to a slaughterhouse in the town of Yachiyo, Hyogo Prefecture, from the Asada Nosan Funai Nojo farm in the town of Tanba in the neighboring prefecture, where some 28,000 chickens had died during the past week, according to the Hyogo Prefectural Government.
The prefectural government immediately set up a task force to handle the matter and requested that poultry farmers and other farmers within a 30-km radius of the Yachiyo slaughterhouse refrain from shipping chickens and eggs.