PAKISTANI police sealed off two poultry farms and workers using poison gas started slaughtering 25,000 chickens overnight after the mild H5-type bird flu was found in flocks.
Tests are underway to determine if the virus found in the chickens in north-west Pakistan bordering Afghanistan is the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain, Agriculture Ministry spokesman Mohammad Afzal said.
"We have found H5-infected birds at two farms at Charsadda and Abbottabad districts in North West Frontier Province and requested the owners to cull all the birds," Mr Afzal said.
"We have not ruled out that it is H5N1, but it appears to be a low-pathogenic strain," he said.
Pakistan had sent samples from infected birds for testing at the EU Reference Laboratory for avian influenza in Weybridge, England, and results were expected "within a week or so" he said.
The supervisor of one of the affected farms said 2000 egg-laying hens had died during the past week, although he insisted it was a normal rate.
Both of the farms have been quarantined, said Rana Mohammed Akhlaq, livestock commissioner at the agriculture ministry.
Pakistan last week banned imports of poultry and live birds from neighbouring India and Iran, as well as France, after all three countries reported H5N1 cases.
The broad H5 virus category only kills birds, unlike the highly pathogenic H5N1 sub-type of the virus that has claimed about 90 human lives in Asia and Turkey.
In 2003 Pakistan destroyed 3.5 million birds after an outbreak of the less virulent H9 and H7 forms.
The cull and a drop in prices cost the industry one billion rupees ($22.5 million).
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