The discovery Saturday of a bird flu antibody at yet another chicken farm in Ibaraki Prefecture has many officials throwing up their hands in despair.
The latest finding, at a farm in Ogawa, brings to 14 the tally of farms affected by avian flu, and they include poultry farms with the latest equipment and facilities.
Because the antibody is of a weak strain of the disease, there are no defining marks of infection, such as birds dying en masse. The flip side, however, is that the strain is highly contagious, so that by the time one chicken is found to have contracted it chances are the entire coop is infected.