asean we must unite, page-2

Print this page
Friday, December 17, 2004
Chicken Deaths in Malaysian State Being Investigated
MALAYSIA - The Perlis Veterinary Department in Malaysia has restricted the movement of chickens at a farm following the deaths of more than 3,000 chickens at Kok Mak.

Tthe farm, situated several kilometres from the Malaysian-Thai border, has 10 pens. It has a capacity of rearing as many as 52,000 chicken.

It currently rears about 14,000 livestock. But more than 1,000 chicken from the farm died over the past five days, causing concern among the village folks of a possible outbreak of avian bird flu.

The situation was further worsened by the indiscriminate dumping of dead chickens, which were in various stages of decomposition, behind a football field.

The department's assistant director, Dr Tariq Jaafar, who visited the farm with several field officers, said they collected tissue samples of the dead chickens for laboratory tests.

"We are concerned because the operator told us that about 200 chickens in his farm died every day. We want to determine the actual cause of the death of the chickens," he said.

The supervisor at the farm, who declined to be named, said staff were at a loss over the deaths.

Dr Tariq said tests would not be carried out on chickens at three other farms in the area as the department wanted to ascertain the cause from the laboratory report.

"We do not want to take any risk. Assuming birds at the first farm have been affected by the bird flu, then birds at the other farms may suffer the same fate if we visit them today. That is why we have decided to wait until the report, which takes 24 hours to process, is out," he said.

On the missing carcasses, Dr Tariq said there was nothing that could be done.

"However, we are monitoring the situation closely so that no other carcasses turn up in the area."