The Control Yuan yesterday issued corrective measures against the Council of Agriculture and four local governments over what it said was the agencies’ administrative negligence in containing what is said to be the worst outbreak of avian influenza in the nation’s history.
The outbreak has resulted in the culling of nearly 5 million birds at 948 farms since January and estimated losses of more than NT$4.5 billion (US$141.17 million).
The Control Yuan yesterday upheld corrective measures against the council, the Tainan City Government and the Yunlin, Chiayi and Pingtung county governments.
Two Control Yuan members, Chang Kuei-mei (仉桂美) and Tsai Pei-tsun (蔡培村), initiated the corrective measures.
In a corrective action report, the two said that the council had underestimated the impact of the outbreak, and that its monitoring mechanism had been “dysfunctional.”
“The council failed to respond adequately to avian influenza infections in numerous areas, and it failed to monitor preventive and biological safety measures enforced by local-government level animal disease prevention agencies, thereby giving rise to a large-scale outbreak,” the report said.
The council’s handling of the outbreaks was “clearly negligent,” it said.
According to the document, Pingtung County — where the first case of H5N2 was reported at a layer hen farm on Dawu Mountain (大武山) in December last year — conducted 1,236 inspections between November and December last year.
The Tainan City Government carried out 661 inspections on poultry farms during the same period, followed by Chiayi County Government’s 298, while the Yunlin County Government conducted 3,140 inspections over the past year.
However, the virus spread rapidly in the four municipalities, despite the multitude of inspections the local governments conducted, and the majority of inspection records indicating that the birds were in good health and that poultry facilities were “well positioned” to prevent the occurrence of avian flu, the report said.
“It shows that the inspections were administered in a perfunctory manner,” it said.
The four municipalities have a high density of poultry farms; some of which are not fully segregated. As such, local animal disease prevention personnel should have ensured that biological safety measures had been adopted before an outbreak to prevent viruses from spreading, it said.
The corrective measure is to be delivered to the Executive Yuan, which should then order the agencies to make the necessary improvements, the report said.
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