Parliament's budget and tax committee would also discuss using reserve funds to help control the spread of the virus, using measures such as border controls, speaker Boris Gryzlov said.
A senior official from the Russian Flu Research Center said earlier Thursday that Russia could potentially begin large-scale production of a bird flu vaccine by April. "We need to complete our tests [on the vaccine] ... I hope it will be in production in April," center director Oleg Kiselyov said.
Gryzlov said, "By spring we plan to produce 100 million doses of the vaccine to inoculate domestic birds."
"We must sustain industrial poultry production, and provide the necessary conditions for poultry production at bird farms and factories... We have received guarantees today that this will be ensured," the speaker said, after meeting with Russia's chief doctor Gennady Onishchenko.
Rural households should also be able to continue poultry farming, he said.
More than 700,000 Russian birds have died from bird flu or been culled in an effort to stop the virus, according to government figures. No cases in humans have been recorded, but concerns have grown that the virus could potentially spread through the south of the country. Turkey has seen several bird flu cases in humans, prompting neighboring countries to seek to tighten border controls.
