July 25, 2005

Japan against Thai poultry vaccination

Japan will ban poultry imports from Thailand if the latter starts a vaccination policy to control the bird flu spread, the Japanese government said.

Late last year, the Thai government had rejected the vaccination as it feared the bird flu virus could mutate into a more virulent strain. Large poultry farms and fighting-cock raisers, however, repeatedly called for its introduction. Poultry farmers and animal health experts have also been debating the use of vaccines against the pathogenic bird flu.

Yayoi Tsujiyama, international animal health affairs deputy director for Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, said however that this would result in difficulties for scientists to differentiate between infected and vaccinated poultry.

Currently, Japan requires Thai animal health authorities to certify that each shipment of poultry is free from vaccination. However, once the certification is found to be null and void, Japan will immediately stop Thai poultry product import, Tsujiyama said.

Though Japan has suspended Thai fresh chicken imports, it still brings in heat-processed chicken meat that has undergone checks by Japanese authorities.

In fact, while Japan didn't import any Thai raw poultry import since last year, it now imports as much Thai cooked chicken meat as raw chicken meat during the pre-bird flu period, Tsujiyama said.

Tsujiyama also said that Japanese inspectors had found some Thai cooked poultry shipments containing half-raw poultry and thus urged the Thai government to improve the shipments' inspection process.

Before it was hit by the bird flu, Thailand was the largest supplier of chicken meat to Japan. Japan now gets its raw chicken meat predominantly from Brazil.