Dead crows test positive for bird flu in Japan

0 Comments | AFP, March, 2004

TOKYO (AFP) — Two wild crows that were found dead tested positive for bird flu in Japan, providing a possible clue as to how the disease spread between the nation's third and fourth outbreaks, an official said.

The birds were found two days earlier some five kilometers apart in Kyoto prefecture, some 400 kilometers (250 miles) southwest of Tokyo, where two outbreaks on poultry farms have hit some 220,000 birds.

"It is one possible factor" linking the cases in Kyoto, said Kyoto livestock sanitation official Hiroshi Nishino.

"It is very difficult to judge the significance of this finding," Nishino said. "Whether the crows have always carried this disease and whether this is a nationwide phenomenon is difficult to tell."

It is unlikely the crows were...