A Chinese court jailed a farmer who reported bird flu outbreaks to the central government to three-and-a-half years for fraud and blackmail, state media said on Tuesday.

Qiao Songju, a goose farmer in the eastern province of Jiangsu, was arrested a month after he reported bird flu outbreaks in the nearby province of Jiangsu in October, Xinhua news agency said.

Qiao had denied most, but not all, of the charges, Xinhua said, without explaining who might have been blackmailed or whether the charges were linked to his bird flu reports, which turned out to be correct.