Islamabad Pakistan has detected H5-type bird flu in chickens on two poultry farms and tests are underway to determine if the virus is the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain, officials said.
Workers used poison gas to start slaughtering around 25,000 birds on the farms in North West Frontier Province, which borders Afghanistan, government and industry officials told AFP.
"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," Agriculture Ministry spokesman Mohammad 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 affected farms have also been quarantined, said Rana Mohammed Akhlaq, livestock commissioner at the same ministry. There was no ban yet on the movement of poultry, he added.
He said the poultry industry would decide whether to kill chickens in the infected area, although slaughter would be mandatory if the virus turns out to be H5N1.
"It will benefit the industry if they cull the infected birds and we hope they will do it voluntarily to contain the virus," Akhlaq said.
Pakistan Poultry Association chairman Raza Mahmood Khursand said workers had started killing birds at the farm in Abbottabad. One of the farms had around 10,000 chickens and the other had around 15,000.
The industry was acting even though the government should have waited for confirmation by the English lab before announcing the presence of the virus, Khursand said.
"We are sure the chickens are safe but our ultimate goal is the health of the nation," he told AFP.
The poultry industry had started ordering bird flu vaccine from abroad and would launch a "full-blown" vaccination campaign as soon as it got the first consignment, he added.
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 dozens of 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.
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