Japan confirmed another outbreak of bird flu at a poultry farm and further tests will be carried out to check for the presence of the H5N1 strain, the agriculture ministry said on Monday.

The ministry said in a statement that tests showed the presence of a type of bird flu among chickens at the farm in the city of Takahashi in Okayama Prefecture, where 49 birds out of 12,000 have died since Friday.

The H5N1 virus has killed at least 164 people worldwide since 2003, most of them in Asia, and more than 200 million birds have died or have been culled to prevent its spread.

The outbreak is the third in Japan this month and there have been no reported cases of human infection from the virus in Japan. The last known human infections of H5N1 in the country were three years ago.

The ministry said it had ordered all poultry at the farm to be killed and the site to be disinfected. Movement of people and goods within a 10 km (6 mile) radius of the farm was to be restricted, it added.

Earlier this month, Japan had two H5N1 outbreaks among poultry in the southwestern prefecture of Miyazaki, the country´s biggest poultry producing region.

In a bid to reassure consumers, Miyazaki´s newly elected governor, Hideo Higashikokubaru, gave a pack of chicken meat to the farm minister in a meeting on Monday.

In 2004, Japan had four H5N1 poultry outbreaks between January and March, including one in Kyoto in western Japan in which 240,000 chickens were culled and 20 million eggs destroyed.