February 13, 2004

 

 

China Bans Animal Imports From Vietnam, Mongolia Over FMD Fears

 

China has suspended all imports of cloven-hoofed animals from Vietnam and Mongolia over foot-and-mouth disease fears.

 

Government agencies that discover any such imports should immediately return or destroy them, the report said, citing the General Administration for Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, or AQSIQ.

 

AQSIQ's decision follows an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease infecting an estimated 2,200 livestock in central Vietnam. Vietnamese officials said Wednesday the outbreak is now under control with only a handful of infections in the last several days.

 

The report didn't elaborate on why the import ban has also been applied to animals and animal products from Mongolia.

 

China will also strengthen its inspection and quarantine procedures to prevent foot-and-mouth from spreading to China, the report said.

 

China has long insisted the nation is free of foot-and-mouth disease, a highly contagious virus that affects cloven-hoofed animals such as cattle and pigs, causing fever and blisters in the animals' mouths and around their hooves. It rarely kills animals but can cause significant production loss.

 

However, Beijing-based Western agricultural experts have said foot-and-mouth disease is endemic and widespread in China, and the country's farming authorities have learned to live with it.

 

China's long-standing assertions that the country is free of the illness were most recently called into question last June, when agricultural officials in southwestern Yunnan province confiscated and slaughtered 90 dairy cows owned by a Canadian company, alleging the animals had tested positive for foot-and-mouth disease.

 

That slaughter was part of a wider cull that included at least 100 other infected cows in the province, a Yunnan Department of Agriculture official told Dow Jones Newswires in July.

 

The official said the contradiction between China's official disclaimer of any cases of the livestock disease and the alleged Yunnan cases would be resolved this year when China would begin officially disclosing outbreaks of the illness.

 

The Yunnan incident sparked a minor diplomatic flap as Canadian consular officials representing the interests of the Canadian company, I-Can Dairy Ltd., sought official justification for the cull.