[p]Mexican authorities ordered the slaughter of nearly a thousand chickens in the state of Tlaxcala to tackle a new outbreak of the bird flu, said the Mexican health agency.

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According to the National Health Service, Safety and Quality (Senasica) through a statement, they said that on April 4 in the community of Santa Cruz El Porvenir, Tlaxcala, a group of chickens with symptoms of this disease were detected.

In response to this the National Emergency for Health in that state by the Secretariat of Agriculture, immediately ordered the segregation of the 34 birds that were in this place.

They also ordered the slaughter of 950 chickens, hens and turkeys of surrounding properties.

Yesterday Senasica technicians swept through an area with a radius of 10 kilometers, where 60 local businesses from the 13 municipalities of Tlaxcala were inspected and did not find any other birds with clinical signs of the disease.

The 2,123 samples collected revealed "that there is no commercial farm in the state that was affected. The virus was present only in the initial focus point, where backyard poultry farming is practiced."

Among the measures implemented to prevent the spread of this virus, checkpoints and internal inspections are performed to prevent the mobilization of live birds, their products and by-products without any type of official control.

Nearly four million birds were slaughtered in Mexico because of an outbreak of the bird flu that was detected in February in the state of Guanajuato. This figure now adds to the more than 22 million killed by the outbreak last summer in the state of Jalisco, Mexico.

Editorial@Sandiegored.com

Omar.Martinez@Sandiegored.com