February 24, 2004

 

 

Bird Flu Spreads In Taiwan

 

Bird flu has spread further in Taiwan with a farm in Kaohsiung, in the southern part of Taiwan, infected for the first time. 113,500 chickens will be culled as a result, Taiwanese officials said on Tuesday.

 

Animal health officials said they suspected the H5N2 strain of avian flu - which cannot be transmitted to humans - was being spread by trucks carrying feed and equipment between farms, although they stressed the outbreak was under control.

 

Taiwan has already culled around 300,000 birds after the virus hit in January. The H5N2 strain cannot infect humans, unlike H5N1, which has killed at least 22 people in Asia and prompted the slaughter of tens of millions of fowl.

 

"The outbreak is not out of control," said Yeh Ying, deputy director of the Bureau of Animal And Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine, speaking by telephone.

 

"Our preventative measures are effective, especially if you look at how it has spread in other countries where millions of birds have been slaughtered," she said.

 

"We suspect the infection in these latest cases could have been caused by vehicles coming from neighbouring farms affected by the disease."

 

The H5N2 virus has now been found in farms in eight counties in Taiwan, mostly in the island's central and southern parts. About 31,000 birds in the new slaughter are from a single farm in Kaohsiung, Yeh said.

 

Despite the spread, the number of birds destroyed is still only a tiny fraction of the 377 million chickens Taiwan bred in 2002 besides 31 million other edible fowl such as ducks, geese and turkeys, according to the government.

 

Animal health officials said they have contained the outbreak, and while its source is still a mystery, they suspect migratory birds or fowl smuggled from China.

 

(US$1 = T$33.3)