The virus was found at one of Saxony's largest poultry farms, the Ministry for Social Affairs in Saxony said Wednesday.
A nearly 2-mile protection zone was established around the farm, located east of Leipzig, Deutsche Welle reported. Officials said they have slaughtered 700 turkeys at the farm and plan to kill some 16,000 more.
A high death rate among turkeys at the farm alerted authorities to the danger, Germany's Friedrich Loeffler Institute for Animal Health said.
State veterinarians say the birds have been regularly checked for bird flu and did not show any signs of the virus or virus anti-bodies during tests at the farm two weeks ago.
The H5N1 virus has been found in wild birds in seven of Germany's states, reaching Berlin late last month when a dead buzzard found in the city was confirmed to have had the virus.
Copyright 2006 by United Press International
Related stories:
Thailand confirms fresh bird flu outbreak
Thailand's agriculture ministry said Monday that it had confirmed an outbreak of bird flu on a backyard farm in the north, six months after the kingdom was declared free of the deadly virus.
Deadly bird flu virus found at German farm: EU
German authorities were culling poultry at a farm in Germany after the discovery of a case of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, the European Commission announced Friday.
Chips could speed up detection of livestock viruses
Some of the worst threats to farm workers and farm animals such as bird flu, foot-and-mouth disease and other emerging viruses could soon be quickly identified by using a simple screening chip developed by scientists from the Institute for Animal Health, scientists will hear today at the Society for General Microbiology’s 162nd meeting being held this week at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre.
Bird flu outbreak reported in Russia
Hundreds of thousands of birds at a poultry farm in Russia's southern Krasnodar Terroritory are being destroyed following an outbreak of bird flu.
New field-deployable biosensor detects avian influenza virus in minutes instead of days
Quick identification of avian influenza infection in poultry is critical to controlling outbreaks, but current detection methods can require several days to produce results.
Bird flu kills Cambodian girl
A new outbreak of bird flu has killed a teenage girl in Cambodia.
Russia bans W. Va. poultry for bird flu
Russia has imposed a temporary ban on poultry products imported from West Virginia after turkeys at a Pendleton County farm tested positive for bird flu.
New study tracks the spread of bird flu between farms
A new way of understanding how highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) spreads among farm birds is published today in
PLoS ONE. The study could help analyse the success of different control measures in the event of future outbreaks.
