Tokyo - Bird flu has been detected at a quail farm in the central Japanese city of Toyohashi, the government said Friday.

Local authorities sequestered a 10-kilometre area around the farm, and plan to cull a large number of the birds, the Jiji Press news agency said.

No quail had died of the virus and no humans had been infected, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said.

The quail had the highly pathogenic H7 strain of the disease. The strain that has been deadly in people is H5N1. (dpa)