February 8, 2012

Taiwan's Kinmen pork ban may be removed in two weeks

In two weeks, the ban on the slaughter of pigs for meat in the county of Kinmen, Taiwan will be lifted once the FMD outbreak becomes under control, the Council of Agriculture (COA) said Tuesday (Feb 7).

The COA's Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine on February 3 reported the outbreak of "type O pan Asia" FMD on two pig farms in Kinmen. That strain of FMD can infect hoofed animals such as deer, cattle, sheep and pigs, but in Taiwan only pigs have been infected so far, according to Huang Kuo-ching, the bureau's deputy director general.

Some 530 pigs in Kinmen were culled between January 30 and February 2 as a preventative measure and a ban was placed on the shipment of raw meat and livestock from the offshore county to Taiwan proper. Huang said the FMD outbreak has not escalated since the culling and the next two weeks will be crucial in the disease control efforts.

If no new FMD cases are reported in the next two weeks, the bureau will lift the ban, which prohibits the sale of raw meat and livestock from farms within a three-kilometre radius of the two infected farms, he said. However, the bureau will continue to monitor livestock farms within that radius, he added. Huang said the outbreak will not affect the timeframe for Taiwan's removal from the World Organization for Animal Health's list of FMD-infected countries.

To be removed from the list, a country has to be free of FMD for more than a year without vaccination of its livestock but Taiwan is still in the process of vaccinating its pigs, Huang said. Japan and South Korea culled millions of livestock last year because of infections by "type O pan Asia" FMD. China is also an infected area for that strain of the disease.