About 200,000 chickens, every bird at Mainland Poultry’s Hillgrove farm, is been culled after the H7N6 strain of high pathogenic avian influenza was discovered there and the farm was locked down to start the month.
Biosecurity New Zealand deputy director-general Stuart Anderson said he remained confident the agency was on the right track to stamping out H7N6, "but there is still work to do".
"The Hillgrove farm is the only property where H7N6 has been detected and monitoring and test results to date continue to show no infection on five other Mainland Poultry properties linked to Hillgrove."
The birds on the farm were being culled, which would be followed by cleaning and decontamination because international experience showed there was "no other way" to remove the risk of the virus spreading.
Cleaning and disinfection would begin on the farm this week and would take a few weeks, he said.
It needs to be done carefully to ensure all traces of the disease have been removed.
MPI would work with Mainland Poultry to determine an appropriate stand-down period before "repopulation" of the farm began, Mr Anderson said.
There had been no other similar cases where entire flocks on farms had been culled, he said.
Hundreds of samples continued to be analysed at MPI’s state-of-the-art National Biocontainment Laboratory at Wallaceville in Wellington.
"We are continuing our rigorous testing of samples due to the disease’s incubation period, which is usually three to 14 days, but can be up to 21 days and through enhanced surveillance will continue into the New Year," he said.
