A Japanese husband and wife apparently hanged themselves on Monday after he was accused of covering up a bird-flu outbreak in his family’s poultry business, police said as experts warned that wild crows may be spreading the disease to new locations.
Hajimu Asada (67) and his wife, Chisako (64), were found early on Monday morning hanging from a tree outside a chicken pen in Himeji, about 480km west of Tokyo, a local police official said on condition of anonymity.
Police found a suicide note saying: ”We have caused so much trouble.”
Asada came under fire for not telling authorities that chickens on his Asada Nosan farm were dying in large numbers, preventing officials from containing the disease at an early stage. The government was considering criminal charges against Asada.
The bird flu has already killed or forced the culling of 100-million birds across Asia and killed 22 people in Vietnam and Thailand. Four bird-flu outbreaks have been recorded in Japan, including two in the town of Tamba, near Kyoto in western Japan, where the two sick crows were found dead on Friday.
The crows were found to be infected with bird flu and authorities warned the discovery opened up the possibility that crows could spread the illness.
”This is a major problem,” said Hiroyuki Higuchi, a professor at Tokyo University. ”There is a possibility the disease may spread to a large area.”
Masako Kurimoto at the Agriculture Ministry told reporters that officials believed the crows were infected by chickens when they entered a virus-contaminated pen.
Higuchi said crows could carry the flu with them from Tamba when they leave town in search for other food sources. Although crows generally don’t travel too far from home, that changes when they are looking for food. He warned city dwellers to be careful of crow droppings.
”One thing we have to be aware of is that crows create large nests in the winter time and make large droppings,” Higuchi said.
”Cats, dogs and people could step on these droppings after they’ve fallen to the ground. There is a possibility crows could infect people this way.”
A dozen crows tested by the Tokyo city government over the weekend all turned up negative for the disease, but officials said they will remain vigilant.
”We’ll watch out for possible deaths of wild birds en masse,” said Susumu Tanaka, a Tokyo Metropolitan government official.
Crows are a common pest in Japan, especially in the cities.
Tokyo alone is inhabited by 24 000 of the black birds, which congregate to feed off the capital’s garbage. Many more call rural chicken and pig farms home, where they feast off the scraps uneaten by livestock.
Tanaka stressed that avian flu doesn’t infect people easily. The flu generally only infects birds, although it has spread to people in a few isolated cases.
The influenza also may not be transmitted as easily among crows as among chickens, but scientists don’t know for sure. Higuchi said the cases near Kyoto were the first he had heard of crows contracting the bird flu, giving researchers little opportunity to study the matter.
Japan has been struggling to contain bird flu, and over the last week mobilised hundreds of soldiers to help townspeople disinfect areas near affected poultry farms and dig holes for the chickens to be buried in. — Sapa-AP