The Diet enacted Wednesday a revised law to curb infectious diseases among livestock and poultry, including the introduction of a compensation system for poultry farmers hit by bird flu.
The legislation is aimed at facilitating the discovery of contagious poultry diseases in the early stages and taking swift countermeasures to protect the poultry industry.
It will take effect next month.
In January, thousands of chickens were found to have died of bird flu at a poultry farm in Yamaguchi Prefecture in the first outbreak of the disease in Japan since 1925.
Other outbreaks were reported later as the disease spread extensively in Asia, including one in Kyoto Prefecture that led to the arrest of a poultry company president for failing to report the deaths of many infected chickens.
The revised law calls for tougher punishment to prevent delayed reports, which could hamper efforts to contain diseases, and compensation for farmers subject to mandatory restrictions on their activities.
In the case of the Yamaguchi outbreak, authorities imposed a ban that prevented farmers and residents from moving chickens and eggs within a 30-km radius of the chicken farm where bird flu was discovered.
The law calls for the national government to pay half of the costs that prefectural governments must undertake to cull livestock or poultry in relation to bird-flu outbreaks.