Thai Deputy Prime Minister Chaturon Chaisaeng has ordered related ministries to urgently revive the country's poultry industry hit by bird flu outbreak, local press reported on Wednesday.

At a weekly meeting of the national committee on bird flu eradication, Chaturon said the country's poultry export had already plunged by 62 percent due to the two bird flu outbreaks inthe past seven months. It is expected that poultry export in Thailand will plummet by 70 percent for the whole year.

To revive Thailand's poultry industry, Chaturon instructed the agriculture ministry to design new poultry farming methods, including introducing the evaporation system under which poultry are isolated to avoid their contact with wild bird. And an insurance program will be launched by the commerce ministry to help farmers resume poultry raising.

More than 160,000 birds have been culled or died after new round of bird flu rekindled the country on July 6. Most poultry farms in Thailand were heavily hit by the bird flu crisis breaking out at the beginning of this year. The establishment of a regional center for bird flu diagnosis and control

in Bangkok will also help Thailand to combat to disease more effectively, said Chaturon.

Last week, delegates from 10 countries agreed here to set up a headquarters of southeast Asia's bird flu surveillance network in Bangkok.

Meanwhile, the livestock department removed 11 areas from Thailand's list of zones affected by bird flu. "We should be able to declare our country free of bird flu very soon," the department' s director-general Yukol Limlamthong was quoted by newspaper Thenation as saying on Wednesday.

He added the department was tackling the outbreaks to ensure the disease would not dampen frozen chicken exports next year.

Source: Xinhua