There has been another outbreak of avian influenza among poultry in the Greater Tainan area, confirmed to be an H5N2 variant of the virus. This state of affairs is the inevitable result of attempting to cover up the initial outbreak.
The drawn-out controversies over ractopamine-laced US beef imports and the avian flu outbreak are hitting domestic pig and chicken farmers hard. Egg prices are down NT$0.5 an egg and each time a farmer sells a pig at the moment he or she loses between NT$1,500 and NT$2,000. However, the current crisis is not just about farmers taking losses, but also involves the more worrying issue of public health.
Trying to cover up the outbreak of a highly pathogenic strain of avian flu is like trying to contain a fire with cardboard: The attempt is not only doomed to failure, it actually feeds the fire and makes it spread even faster. Since the original cover-up in 2008, there has been no immediate response and no attempt to eliminate the source of the virus at the point of outbreak, so of course it will spread.
When news broke of the outbreak of the highly pathogenic variant on March 3, nobody knew how many times it had flared up over the past few years. Chicken farmers, afraid that their livestock would be culled and that compensation would not cover their losses — leaving them with no livelihood — have kept quiet about the issue.
The government’s epidemic prevention teams should have tried to get the situation under control and eliminate the virus, but failed to act, in the interests of protecting the apparent official cover-up. As a result, the highly pathogenic avian flu virus has spread to other chicken farms and mutated into localized variants.
Epidemic control units in Taiwan should emulate the measures undertaken by their counterparts in the US and Japan. In the US, all birds suspected of having avian flu are culled, irrespective of whether they have the highly pathogenic strain or another variant.
The entire group of chickens amongst which the highly pathogenic variety is found is destroyed. Those with the less virulent strains are immediately quarantined for a short time and slaughtered in designated locations. The meat from this second group can be sold for consumption, as can their eggs after proper decontamination measures are taken. The industry takes care of compensation for loss of livestock, in full, from its own funds.
In Japan, all chickens are destroyed, regardless of the variant found, be it H5 or H7, and the government compensates farmers.
The local mutations of the virus in Taiwan ensure that outbreaks of avian flu in chicken farms continue. The government needs to adopt urgent and appropriate measures, and chicken farmers must comply with government epidemic control stipulations, reporting any outbreaks that occur. As soon as H5N2 is discovered, the government should follow the example of the US authorities, quarantining and culling the chickens and compensating the chicken farmers for their loss. This is the only way we can ever hope to completely eliminate the virus.
We absolutely must not rely on inoculations, which are not effective in the case of avian flu, and risky because immune chickens have different levels of antibodies after treatment. This means the virus could spread throughout the chicken population and continue to mutate, which could lead to the emergence of an even more virulent, even more pathogenic strain. This not only poses a real risk to chickens, it constitutes a serious public health risk.
Lai Shiow-suey is an honorary professor in the Department of Veterinary Medicine at National Taiwan University.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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