DOVER, Del. (AP) – Officials responded to a new discovery of bird flu Tuesday by ordering a quarantine of 80 farms and the slaughter of 72,000 more chickens. The swift action was aimed at averting more bans on U.S. exports.

The second case of disease was found in a commercial flock of roaster-type chickens in northern Sussex County, at least five miles away from the farm where the first flock tested positive last week.

The chickens at the second farm were killed Tuesday afternoon, said Delaware Secretary of Agriculture Michael Scuse.

Perdue Farms said it had destroyed the 72,000 chickens to prevent the spread of the disease. The company said the flock was believed to have been infected by a nearby flock of chickens that was raised for the New York City live markets.

The first flock found to be infected was raised for the New York City live markets, state officials have said.

All sales of live poultry in Delaware, all sales or auctions of farm equipment and all farmer and grower-related meetings have been canceled. About 80 farms within a six-mile radius of the two farms will be quarantined, state officials said.

“This now is a very, very serious matter. We have a multibillion dollar industry at stake,” Scuse said.

Seven nations, including some of America’s largest export customers, have banned at least some poultry imports from the United States because of the bird flu cases.

Annual poultry exports total more than $1.7 billion, about $1.4 billion of it in shipments of broiler chicken. Countries that have banned U.S. imports, including China and Japan, imported at least $245 million in U.S. broiler chicken in the past 11 months, said David Harvey, an Agriculture Department economist.

If the avian influenza does not spread, the impact of the bans could be short-lived, said Richard Lobb, a spokesman for the National Chicken Council, a producers and processors trade group.

But U.S. officials must show the world that they have the disease properly diagnosed and are eradicating it, Lobb said. In previous poultry disease outbreaks, foreign officials have ended bans quickly after they were assured that their flocks would be safe from contagion if they resumed imports, he said.

Delaware state veterinarian Edwin Odor said each flock is tested for the flu before slaughter, and said the food supply is safe. Under the quarantine, chickens over 21 days old will be tested every 10 days during the quarantine, which is expected to last a month, Scuse said.

Scuse said it was unclear how the second farm was infected. “At this time, we cannot explain how the virus appeared so far outside our original containment zone,” he said.

Tests on 20 chicken houses within a two-mile radius of the first flock were negative, state officials said.

No recalls have been ordered, agriculture officials said. The sale or the movement of chickens by large poultry companies has not been stopped, Scuse said.

Maryland Department of Agriculture spokeswoman Sue duPont said agricultural officials from Maryland, Delaware and Virginia met Tuesday with poultry industry representatives to determine a course of action.

Poultry farms in Caroline County, Md., which lies along the Delaware state line, will be tested this week as a precaution, duPont said. Farmers also are cutting out visits between farms and canceling meetings, she said.

The disease was first found on a farm in Delaware’s southern Kent County operated by an independent grower. State officials immediately ordered the slaughter of 12,000 birds and began testing flocks within two miles.

If the disease could be confined to Delaware, then countries that have banned all U.S. imports might restrict their bans to birds from that state, which comprise 3 percent of U.S. production, Harvey said.

On Tuesday, China joined Poland, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea in banning U.S. poultry imports. A ban by Russia, America’s largest poultry export market, affects only imports from Delaware.

Agricultural attaches in U.S. embassies will provide their foreign counterparts with results of tests on the type of bird flu found in Delaware, said Agriculture Department spokeswoman Julie Quick. The results could confirm that the Delaware strain is not the type that devastates flocks, she said.

Delaware officials have said the outbreaks are not related to the virulent variety of avian influenza that is blamed for the deaths of at least 19 people in Vietnam and Thailand. The Asian bird flu also forced the slaughter of an estimated 50 million birds as authorities in the stricken countries worked to rein in the spread of the contagious disease.

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Associated Press Writer Ira Dreyfuss in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

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On the Net:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention page: http://www.cdc.gov/travel/other/precautions-avian-flu-020604.htm

World Health Organization page: http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian-influenza/publichealth/en/

AP-ES-02-10-04 1815EST