China has reported a further break out of bird flu in chickens and ducks.
China notified the United Nations of the latest outbreak in Xiangtan County - near the provincial capital, Changsha - yesterday, according to the World Organisation for Animal Health.
The World Health Organisation has said the H5N1 strain of bird flu is endemic in poultry in China and across much of Asia, and it could only be a matter of time before it develops the ability to pass easily from human to human.
China has reported no human cases so far.
An Agriculture Ministry official in Beijing confirmed the Hunan outbreak but gave no details. The notice said that 687 chickens and ducks showed signs of illness, 545 had died and a total of 2,487 birds were culled in the outbreak in Hunan county, also famous in China as Mao Zedong's birthplace.
"The outbreak has been effectively controlled," the Agriculture Daily newspaper said, quoting the national bird flu laboratory as saying it had identified the strain as the deadly H5N1.
China reported another outbreak yesterday among farm geese in the eastern province of Anhui and said that it, too, had been brought under control with no reported human infections.
China had also notified Hong Kong of the outbreak, the government said. The former British colony, which reverted to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, gets much of its food from the neighbouring southern Chinese province of Guangdong, which borders Hunan.
Hong Kong does not currently buy any poultry meat or live birds from Hunan but will bar any such imports from the province as a precaution, the government added.
China's sheer size and its attempts to conceal the emergence of the SARS virus in 2003 have prompted fears among some experts that it has had more bird flu cases than officially recorded.
However, experts and UN officials have said they believe China is better prepared and more open than in 2003.