Authorities were in the process Wednesday of destroying thousands of chickens at a Yamanashi Prefecture farm that is at the center of an avian flu outbreak.
The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry meanwhile said it will step up its monitoring even further to prevent the disease from mutating and spreading to humans.
The ministry said it was to hold a health risk-management conference Wednesday evening aimed at checking whether its in-house system is sufficiently prepared to share information and spot cases of possible human infection.
It will also step up its cooperation with the National Institute of Infectious Diseases and other such institutions.
The outbreak, the first in Japan since 1925, has killed 8,300 chickens at the farm since Dec. 28.
Authorities in Yamaguchi Prefecture are in the process of killing and burying 26,000 more chickens at the farm to stop the disease from spreading.
Meanwhile, the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry also decided to up its monitoring of the case.
It said it would urge prefectural governments nationwide to implement systemic supervision measures with regard to the outbreak, along with swift steps to deal with possible cases of human infection.
According to the health ministry, avian flu is unlikely to infect humans unless they inhale a large amount of the virus.
But after entering the human body or the bodies of livestock such as pigs, the virus can mutate and become a new type of influenza virus that could trigger a global epidemic, it said.