The Council of Agriculture (COA) is preparing to ban the import of geese with hemorrhagic nephritis and enteritis, nine months after the disease was first discovered in the nation.
The council announced the ban on Thursday last week, saying that geese and live waterfowl that test positive for the disease — which has a mortality rate of up to 60 percent and can cause limping, tremors and bloody stools in geese — would be prohibited from entering the nation starting in February.
A Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) report yesterday criticized the council’s epidemic prevention efforts, saying that it did not initiate proper disease control measures until nine months after the disease was discovered in March, when about 9,000 geese died in Tainan and Chiayi.
The council said that the March outbreak was not the first local discovery of the disease.
To clarify media reports, Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine Deputy Director Shih Tai-hua (施泰華) yesterday said that the March outbreak was the first “official” discovery of the disease, while there had been previous unconfirmed reports by academics.
The disease is not included in the Statute for the Prevention and Control of Infectious Animal Diseases (動物傳染病防治條例), nor is it a disease that must be reported to the World Organisation for Animal Health, so the council did not need to declare it to the authorities, while measures to prevent the spread of the disease had been taken, Shih said, adding that there has not been a confirmed case since March.
The disease can be found in European nations that supply livestock and poultry to Taiwan, so the council has designated the virus, goose hemorrhagic polyomavirus, as one of the four viruses to be screened for when importing fowls, in addition to viruses responsible for avian influenza, Newcastle disease and duck viral enteritis, Shih said.
Independent journalist and filmmaker Lee Hui-jen (李惠仁), who spent years investigating avian influenza in Taiwan, said the council should have acted immediately after the disease was first discovered.
“The council should not have taken suspected cases of hemorrhagic nephritis and enteritis lightly, it should have taken action when the disease was first discovered in March,” he said.
“The council’s perfunctory attitude is responsible for the outbreaks and spread of the bird flu, which is still running rampant in Taiwan,” he added.
Meanwhile, 18,810 free range chickens at a farm in Changhua County’s Jhutang Township (竹塘) were yesterday culled after they were found to have been infected with a highly pathogenic avian influenza virus of the H5N2 strain, the bureau said.
It was the fifth confirmed avian influenza case since Nov. 25, while a total of 57,010 chickens and ducks have been culled since then.
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