The number of poultry culled nationwide as avian influenza outbreaks escalate has surged past 1 million, while two more teams of extermination workers are to be dispatched to Yunlin, where the situation is the most severe, putting the total number of exterminators at more than 400, the Council of Agriculture said.
Meanwhile, six more chicken farms were confirmed to be hit by a highly pathogenic H5 subtype yesterday, raising the tally to 14.
The newly confirmed facilities include three organic chicken farms in Changhua County, two in Pingtung County and one in Greater Kaohsiung.
Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine Director-General Chang Su-san (張淑賢) yesterday said that in addition to disinfection processes carried out at farms, all vehicles carrying poultry, eggs and feed from the five municipalities hit hardest by the outbreaks — Changhua, Yunlin, Chiayi, Greater Tainan and Pingtung — would also undergo disinfection.
Checkpoints would be set up along all major roads connecting the areas with other municipalities, she said. Items to be disinfected include the driver’s and passengers’ shoes, tires and mats.
Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Bao-ji (陳保基) said the council yesterday afternoon allocated subsidies totaling NT$110 million (US$3.5 million) to cover disease control operations expenditures, of which NT$43 million went to Yunlin; NT$18 million to Chiayi, where 38 goose farms have been hit; NT$15 million to Pingtung; NT$15 million to Greater Tainan; and NT$10 million to Changhua.
He said the council has dispensed 18,190 hazmat suits, 17,040 masks and 10,000 pairs of gloves to extermination workers since Tuesday last week.
Chen also denied media reports that there have been shortages in resources, saying that apart from the council’s aid, resources have been pooled from the private sector and that the Animal and Plant Disease Control Center has a stockpile of equipment.
He urged the media not to disseminate misleading information, saying: “It does not do the current circumstances any good.”
Asked if there were any weaknesses in the council’s disease control measures, Chen said it was farmers irresponsibly disposing of bird carcasses in Yunlin and Chiayi last week.
“The only weakness is farmers discarding dead poultry, because it could exacerbate the spread of avian flu,” he said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching