Animal and livestock disease control authorities in Changhua County raised an alert on Thursday against a possible outbreak of African swine fever that has reportedly wreaked havoc on hog farms in northern China recently.
Officials at the Animal Disease Control Center of Changhua County quoted foreign news wire services as reporting that an outbreak of a disease similar to African swine fever has been reported at hog farms in areas of northern China's Heilongjiang Province, bordering Russia.
Russia has reportedly reinforced its controls along the border with China in a bid to keep the hog disease at bay.
CHINESE PIG FARMERS
Changhua officials urged hog farm operators in the county and the rest of the country to strengthen disease prevention measures and to avoid inviting their Chinese counterparts to visit local farms or livestock markets.
They also called for members of Taiwan's public not to purchase pork and pork products from unknown sources.
They said that African swine fever is a highly contagious, generalized disease of pigs caused by a virus known as iridovirus.
The virus resists inactivation and can persist in meat for up to 15 weeks, processed ham for up to 6 months, and up to one month in contaminated livestock pens.
The disease is endemic to most of southern Africa and on the Iberian peninsula of Europe.
Since the 1960s, outbreaks have occurred in France, Italy, Malta, Belgium, Holland, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
Outbreaks occur when domestic pigs come in contact with carrier ticks, rather than from direct transmission from other pigs or warthogs.
EXCRETIONS, SECRETIONS
In Europe, direct transmission is more important as the virus is shed in high concentration in the animals' excretions and secretions during the acute phase the disease.
After an incubation period of five to 15 days, the disease may manifest itself in a number of forms. Animals found to be in the peracute phase of the disease usually die soon after discovery, while pigs found to be in the acute phase of the disease can exhibit a variety of symptoms.
In the beginning, infected animals will exhibit high fevers of up to 42oC, followed by one to two days of loss of appetite and recumbency, skin blotching, diarrhea or miscarriages. Mortality is close to 100 percent within seven days, the Changhua animal disease control officials said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods