Thailand's first case of bird flu has been confirmed in a 7-year-old boy, a Thai senator confirmed, accusing the government of Thailand to cover-up the outbreak of the Bird Flu Disease in the Thai Kingdom after it repeatedly denied the deadly disease had reached Thailand.

Thailand, Asia's leading chicken exporter, is now to take drastic measures to control a further outbreak of the deadly Chicken Flu disease among its poultry with a mass chicken slaughter scheduled in 20 Thai provinces.

The Thai authorities insist that the illness plaguing its birds is not the avian influenza which has forced the culling of millions of chickens in Vietnam and already killed five people. Instead, the government of Thailand said that it's chickens were hit by Fowl-Cholera and Bronchitis.

But a lack of public confidence in eating chicken, connected to the bird flu crisis in Vietnam, and an apparent inability to contain a further spread of infections in Thailand, have now led to much harsher measures.

According to the Thai agriculture ministry, all chickens in the vicinity of affected farms will be killed and a massive testing program initiated on farms in a radius of 50 kilometers around the affected places.

The agriculture minister of Thailand has criticized farmers who resisted official attempts to control the Chicken Flu Disease and has threatened those who refuse to co-operate with legal action.

Many farmers had resisted control measures against the deadly Bird Flu outbreak in anticipation of high sales for Chinese New Year. But a walk through the markets of Chinatown in Bangkok is enough to see that many families in Thailand have already shunned the traditional chicken component at their New Year's feast.

Chicken traders complain that sales are much diminished compared with the same time last year.