More than 150 pigs at a Taitung farm have tested positive for the A(H1N1) virus, marking the country’s first case of pigs being diagnosed with the influenza strain, Council of Agriculture (COA) officials confirmed yesterday.
The Taitung County Livestock Disease Control Center began testing pigs on Oct. 27 after learning that about 160 out of approximately 3,000 animals at the farm had begun experiencing symptoms such as coughing, runny noses and diarrhea 10 days earlier.
Huang Jin-cheng (黃金城), chief of the COA’s Animal Health Research Institute, told a press conference that the initial investigation indicated the virus had passed from an infected person to a pig and then spread throughout the herd.
The livestock disease center took immediate action to contain the virus and began testing workers on the farm to determine the origin of the outbreak, he said.
Huang said that the swine flu virus is not transmitted by food, so consumers should not fear contracting swine flu by eating pork or pork products. He said it was safe to eat pig products that have been properly handled and cooked.
Canada, Argentina, Australia, Britain, Ireland, Norway, Japan and Iceland have also reported cases of swine flu in pigs, Huang said.
Hsu Tien-lai (??, director of the COA’s Department of Animal Industry, said infected pigs would not be medicated because they should recover in three to seven days.
There is no evidence that the animals can transmit swine flu to humans and there have been no reported cases of the virus mutating into a form that can do so, Hsu said.
The infections put pig farmers on high alert, with emergency measures kicking in to prevent the outbreak from spreading. Most of the nation’s pig farms are located in central and southern Taiwan, including Yunlin County, home to some 1.45 million pigs, Tainan County, with 790,000 pigs and Kaohsiung County with 400,000.
Lu Cheng-chang (呂政璋), director of Yunlin County’s Agricultural Affairs Bureau, said he had instructed the county’s pig farms and meat markets to redouble their efforts to prevent an epidemic.
He said no pigs in Yunlin County had contracted the virus as of yesterday.
Poultry and livestock farmers in Yunlin were told to be vaccinated against swine flu immediately.
Centers for Disease Control Director Steve Kuo (郭旭崧) confirmed that the strain in Taitung was the new strain of A(H1N1) that has caused a global scare in recent months.
Kuo urged the public not to panic as “it is not news that the virus exists in pigs.”
“It will not increase the A(H1N1) threat we are facing,” he said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY JIMMY CHUANG
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