Nearly 20,000 chickens on a farm in central Taiwan were slaughtered yesterday after a weak strain of bird flu was found in some of the birds, the Council of Agriculture said yesterday.
Officials of the council's Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine said the strain, H5N2, was found on Jan. 5. The strain is less pathogenic than the H5N1 strain that has killed at least three people in Vietnam.
The council decided yesterday to have 19,326 chickens at the farm in Fangyuan township, Changhua County, slaughtered.
The council and the Changhua County Government jointly carried out the task.
As a preventive measure, birds at 21 farms within 1km of the site had been inspected since Jan. 7, none of which were found to be infected.
According to Chen Yu-hsin (
Last year, two weak strains -- H7N7 and H5N2 -- were found on farms in Ilan and Tainan counties.
After a slaughter, monitoring continued for six months in Ilan without any problems surfacing. The affected farms in Tainan are still being monitored.
Chen said the World Organization for Animal Health has no regulations on domestic quarantine measures to prevent the spread of weak strains of bird flu.
"We take strict measures, having all chickens on the farm killed in order to decrease the risk," Chen said.
Officials said the country must be cautious because Taiwan is a wintering site for migratory birds which depart from Siberia and pass over South Korea or Japan, where bird flu spread, on their way here.
NO-LIMITS PARTNERSHIP: ‘The bottom line’ is that if the US were to have a conflict with China or Russia it would likely open up a second front with the other, a US senator said Beijing and Moscow could cooperate in a conflict over Taiwan, the top US intelligence chief told the US Senate this week. “We see China and Russia, for the first time, exercising together in relation to Taiwan and recognizing that this is a place where China definitely wants Russia to be working with them, and we see no reason why they wouldn’t,” US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a US Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing on Thursday. US Senator Mike Rounds asked Haines about such a potential scenario. He also asked US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse
INSPIRING: Taiwan has been a model in the Asia-Pacific region with its democratic transition, free and fair elections and open society, the vice president-elect said Taiwan can play a leadership role in the Asia-Pacific region, vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) told a forum in Taipei yesterday, highlighting the nation’s resilience in the face of geopolitical challenges. “Not only can Taiwan help, but Taiwan can lead ... not only can Taiwan play a leadership role, but Taiwan’s leadership is important to the world,” Hsiao told the annual forum hosted by the Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation think tank. Hsiao thanked Taiwan’s international friends for their long-term support, citing the example of US President Joe Biden last month signing into law a bill to provide aid to Taiwan,
China’s intrusive and territorial claims in the Indo-Pacific region are “illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive,” new US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo said on Friday, adding that he would continue working with allies and partners to keep the area free and open. Paparo made the remarks at a change-of-command ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, where he took over the command from Admiral John Aquilino. “Our world faces a complex problem set in the troubling actions of the People’s Republic of China [PRC] and its rapid buildup of forces. We must be ready to answer the PRC’s increasingly intrusive and
STATE OF THE NATION: The legislature should invite the president to deliver an address every year, the TPP said, adding that Lai should also have to answer legislators’ questions The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday proposed inviting president-elect William Lai (賴清德) to make a historic first state of the nation address at the legislature following his inauguration on May 20. Lai is expected to face many domestic and international challenges, and should clarify his intended policies with the public’s representatives, KMT caucus secretary-general Hung Meng-kai (洪孟楷) said when making the proposal at a meeting of the legislature’s Procedure Committee. The committee voted to add the item to the agenda for Friday, along with another similar proposal put forward by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The invitation is in line with Article 15-2