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Park workers
weep as birds are culled |
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IPOH: It was a sad day for workers at the Eco Park of the Bukit Merah Laketown Resort near Taiping as they watched the birds being culled. Perak Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Mohamed Tajol Rosli Ghazali said he was informed that the workers were attached to the birds which they had been training and handling. “They cried when the birds were culled,” he said after opening the state-level 2006 Entrepreneur Movement programme here yesterday. “But for public safety, all the birds had to be culled,” he added. He said the birds had been trained to perform certain tricks like playing a basketball with their beaks and picking |
out the correct answer when asked to calculate. Tajol Rosli said one of the birds, a cockatoo, cost about RM50,000 and the resort had no choice but to destroy it. State veterinary officer Dr Wan Mohd Kamil Wan Nik said tracheal and faecal swabs had been taken from poultry and birds within 2km radius of Kampung Changkat Tualang. He said the samples had been sent to the Veterinary Research Institute (VRI) and the testing would take about three days. In Petaling Jaya, the resort said no dead birds were found at the park. |
Its public relations officer Hanina Abdul Morat said the bird flu virus was found in faecal samples that had been sent to the VRI and not from dead birds. “There have not been any dead birds found in the bird park since March 9,” she said in a statement. “We also send faecal samples weekly to the VRI since the start of the H5N1 outbreak as a precautionary measure,” she added. “We suspect the droppings could be from migratory birds which fly over the area on their way to Kuala Gula.”
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