Agartala: Bird flu detected in a government owned poultry farm at Gandhigram, about 18 km from here, official sources said today.
Director of Animal Resource department, Manoranjan Sarkar said following deaths of poultry in the farm about four days ago, samples were sent to High Security Animal Disease Laboratory (HSADL) in Bhopal which confirmed the presence of H5N1 virus in the affected birds.
Rapid Response Squad of Animal Resource Development Department (ARDD) have been made ready and were waiting for approval from the department to begin culling he said adding the culling would be restricted only to the farm.
There are 3871 poultry in Gandhigram farm in West Tripura district. Sarkar said more than 300 poultry were culled within the 3-km radius area of government-owned Lembucherra poultry farm in the district, about 20 km from here in the last week of January this year after bird flu was detected in the farm.
Tripura first witnessed outbreak of avian influenza way back in 2008.
PTI
