While there were no new reports yesterday of a spread in the foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) outbreak among cattle in central Taiwan, the Council of Agriculture (COA) said it is bracing for the appearance of the virus in other animal species.
COA officials said yesterday that an analysis of samples taken from affected cattle indicates the virus is of the O-Kinmen strain and therefore easily transmitted among cloven-hoofed animals including cattle, swine, goats, and deer. The finding prompted officials to warn farmers yesterday to be wary of a further outbreak among the hog population.
At a press conference held by the council yesterday, scientists from the Pig Research Institute of Taiwan (PRIT, 台灣養豬科學研究所) said that the virus causing the FMD outbreak in Liuchiao township (六腳村), Chiayi County, has been identified as O-Kinmen type virus, the same type found in infected diary cattle discovered several days ago in Yunlin County.
The O-Kinmen type virus was first found last year in Taiwan, when cattle on several farms in both Kinmen and in Changhua County were infected by FMD.
"The scientific evidence shows that the source of the virus causing the FMD outbreak this year appears to be the same as that which caused the FMD outbreak in southern Taiwan last year," said deputy director of the institute, Yang Ping-cheng (楊平政).
Yang suggested that the best method to tackle the spread of FMD should be to block any possible channels of further transmission.
"We have to prevent the possible outbreak in hogs, because the concentration of the virus in fluids drained from hog carcasses is 3,000 times that seen in cattle fluids, which would accelerate the outbreak of the disease," Yang said.
However, COA officials said that the source of the virus causing the outbreak was still uncertain.
"We are tracing possible sources although no further FMD outbreak was reported," Watson Sung (宋華聰), deputy head of the COA's animal and plant health inspection and quarantine bureau (動植物防檢局).
COA officials said that source could be figured out by comparing the virus with others currently causing FMD outbreaks in other countries, such as China.
However, they said that it was uncertain if virus samples could be obtained from China.
COA officials said yesterday that local disease prevention staff had engaged in wholesale vaccination work in all ranches in Yunlin, Chiayi and Tainan counties.
Where government-supplied chemicals for sterilization are unavailable, some desperate cattle farmers in Yunlin and Chiayi counties are employing their own methods, such as constructing temporary cattle-dips containing water and their own chemicals.
"I believe that my cattle will be immune from the disease as long as they are dipped," said one farmer in an interview.
COA officials said that local workshops will be set up to deliver government information to farmers.
"In addition, we will undertake island-wide blood-tests on all registered cattle (黃牛) to prevent them from becoming FMD virus disseminators," Sung said.
More than 250 cattle have been slaughtered in the past three days in an effort to contain the outbreak, now limited to Yunlin and Chiayi counties, while farmers have been asked to vaccinate the remaining 160,000 cattle around Taiwan.
RSS