Indonesia insists on selective poultry cull to prevent bird flu

Indonesia would opt for selective rather than mass cull of its poultry in order to prevent bird flu from spreading, while the virus had killed five out of nine infected persons, Indonesian Agricultural Minister Anton Apriantono said here on Friday.

The minister argued that mass cull would not guarantee that it could completely killed the virus in effected areas and might create social problems instead.

Wild birds migrating from one place to another could bring the lethal virus to the areas where mass cull had been done, thus making the cull invalid, he said.

He said that Indonesia was a big country which had too many small farms across its territory to validate mass cull.

The mass cull is not the most reliable way to eliminate the virus, he said, adding that with mass cull, the virus can not be eliminated, because the carriers are wild birds and migrating birds.

Earlier, Indonesia had conducted a selective cull to prevent the disease due to financial problems. But the World Health Organization questioned the decision.

Scores of foreign countries, including the United States, Netherlands and Germany, as well as the World Bank have committed to giving financial assistance to Indonesia to combat the disease.

However, Indonesia chose cooperation with these volunteers rather than the acceptance of financial assistance to combat the desease, citing that the country was not the source of the epidemic.

Source: Xinhua