South Africa culls nearly 2.5M chickens in effort to contain bird flu outbreaks

BY GERALD IMRAY

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — South Africa has culled nearly 2.5 million chickens in an effort to contain dozens of outbreaks of two separate strains of avian influenza that have threatened to create a shortage of eggs for consumers and are hitting an industry already struggling due to an electricity crisis, the government said on Tuesday.

Another 205,000 chickens have died from bird flu in at least 60 separate outbreaks across the country, with more than half of those outbreaks in Gauteng province, which includes the country’s biggest city, Johannesburg, and the capital, Pretoria.

Some grocery stores in Johannesburg were limiting the number of eggs customers were allowed to buy this week — in some cases to one carton of six eggs — and the government acknowledged there were “supply constraints.”

The government was moving to fast-track new import permits for companies to bring in eggs