January 28, 2004

 

 

China Says It's Still Free Of Bird Flu

 

China said it remained free of bird flu Tuesday, as it investigated what could be an alarming development - reports that hundreds of dead ducks had been found near its southern border with hard-hit Vietnam.

 

"We are investigating whether the report is true or not," said Yan Qibin, an official with the Food Quarantine Bureau of the Ministry of Agriculture.

 

"Right now, we have no bird flu cases in China. But the situations of its neighboring countries are very complicated, and we are enhancing our bird flu prevention methods," he told The Associated Press.

 

Separately, other Chinese quarantine officials said they would impose poultry bans on Pakistan and Indonesia, bringing to eight the number of countries whose bird products have been banned from the region's largest economy.

 

"Fowl, birds and related products arriving in China from these countries will be destroyed under the supervision of the quarantine bureau," the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper said, citing an unnamed official from the Ministry of Agriculture.

 

The report didn't say when the prohibition would begin or what the related products were. Telephone calls to the ministry weren't answered - the country is in the middle of the Lunar New Year holiday - and its Web site had no information on the action.

 

No cases of bird flu have been reported in China, which has already stopped shipments from Cambodia, Thailand, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam to prevent the disease from spreading to its poultry stocks. Laos and Taiwan have also reported the virus but the mainland hasn't said anything about poultry bans from those areas.

 

In 2001, China imported more than 646,000 tons of chicken meat, according to the Web site of the China Animal Agriculture Association, which is overseen by the Ministry of Agriculture. The site didn't say which countries the birds came from.

 

Beijing has also stepped up border inspections for tainted birds while agricultural inspectors were examining domestic chicken supplies for any problems.

 

The Health Ministry has ordered all health workers to be trained in methods to prevent the spread of the disease, setting March 15 as a deadline for the education to be completed. No details were available.

 

China's openly aggressive campaign to combat the disease starkly contrasts with the government's initial secretive response last year to the SARS outbreak. Severe acute respiratory syndrome killed 349 people on the mainland before retreating in June.

 

As with SARS, rumors of outbreaks of bird flu in China have been circulating but are difficult to confirm.

 

The government on Tuesday ordered an investigation into a report by Hong Kong's Wen Wei Po newspaper that 200 ducks were found dead recently at a farm in southern China's Guangxi region, which borders Vietnam.

 

Officials have ordered the slaughter of all poultry within three kilometers of the farm, said the report, which was published Monday.

 

The reports don't appear to have surfaced in China's tightly controlled state media.

 

An official from the Longan county government, where the farm is located, said Tuesday that he "didn't know anything" about the duck slaughter.

 

"I'm not worried about the possibility of bird flu here because we are following instructions from the county's health bureau on how to prevent the disease," said the official, who would give only his family name, Wang.