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Japan halts Canada poultry imports due to bird flu
Japan has halted imports of poultry from Canada as of Friday after an outbreak of bird flu in that country, the farm ministry said. The ban will be imposed on live birds as well as meat and meat products, it said in a statement.
Bird flu was discovered on a chicken farm in British Columbia on Thursday.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency was still conducting laboratory tests but officials said it had been identified as the H7 strain of avian influenza, the same type of strain found recently in Delaware in the United States. The Japanese statement said imports of fresh poultry from Canada amounted to just 43 tons in the year to March 2003, about 0.01 percent of all poultry imports in that year.
Japan has closed its borders to poultry imports from countries that have reported an outbreak of bird flu.
These include Thailand, China and the United States, three of its top four foreign suppliers of the meat. The three countries accounted for about 19.5 percent of the fresh poultry consumed in the country in the year to March 2003.
Japan itself has reported an outbreak involving the H5N1 strain that has hit Asia's poultry industry. There have been no cases of human infection in Japan. |
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