No new cases of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) have been found in the country since the start of this month after the animal health authorities resumed vaccination of pigs, a government agency reported yesterday.
After the authorities restarted FMD vaccinations for pigs aged 12 to 14 weeks earlier this month in bid to stave off a fresh outbreak of the epidemic, Taiwan has not reported any new cases, the Council of Agriculture’s (COA) Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine said.
Chiu Chui-chang (邱垂章), a bureau section chief, said pigs of that age are vulnerable to FMD and must be vaccinated against the disease. The amount of FMD vaccine used this month was more than double the amount used the previous month, he said.
Before the resumption of vaccinations, only sporadic FMD cases were reported to the bureau from different regions in the last year, but the bureau decided to re-impose the practice in an effort to make Taiwan an FMD-free country recognized by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) with a zero-vaccination rate, bureau officials said.
Until late last year, 90 percent of the pigs on 12,000 farms around the country had stopped receiving FMD vaccinations, moving Taiwan toward the zero-injection rate required by the OIE, they said.
FMD first broke out in Taiwan in 1997, brought into the country by hogs smuggled from China, forcing the bureau to mandate the vaccination of all pigs to curtail the spread of the epidemic in Taiwan from that year onward, bureau officials said.
With the inoculation measure back in place, the officials said it will now take Taiwan several more years to achieve its goal of becoming recognized as FMD-free.
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