Taiwan’s first case of African swine fever (ASF) was confirmed on Tuesday evening at a hog farm in Taichung’s Wuci District (梧棲), trigging nationwide emergency measures and stripping Taiwan of its status as the only Asian country free of classical swine fever, ASF and foot-and-mouth disease, a certification it received on May 29. The government on Wednesday set up a Central Emergency Operations Center in Taichung and instituted an immediate five-day ban on transporting and slaughtering hogs, and on feeding pigs kitchen waste. The ban was later extended to 15 days, to account for the incubation period of the virus that causes ASF.
ASF is highly contagious and deadly to hogs, and although it cannot be transmitted to people and properly cooked pork products are safe to eat, its high mortality can cause pork shortages and other economic impacts.
No new cases were found in the first round of inspections of about 80 percent of the nation’s pig farms. However, the Ministry of Agriculture still described the situation as “tense,” while many pig farmers have expressed concern that the 15-day ban would cause overcrowding on their farms, increasing the likelihood of other outbreaks, while increasing expenses. At the core of the investigation is how the virus entered the nation. Many experts have speculated that it came from contaminated kitchen waste fed to the pigs at the Wuci farm. That kitchen waste likely contained infected pork that was smuggled into Taiwan, they said.
Among 9,507 tested pork samples seized at national borders in the past seven years, 996 tested positive for the ASF virus — a positivity rate of about 10 percent, government data showed. Most of the ASF-positive pork (about 85 percent) was from China and Southeast Asia. While the government in the past few years has implemented stricter customs checks to prevent smuggled pork products from entering Taiwan, it is still difficult to totally block them from international parcels containing pastries, snacks and dried pet food purchased online.
Another issue is whether kitchen waste should be allowed as pig feed. Only a few local governments have banned it since 2018. Among Taiwan’s more than 150,000 pig farms, only about 8 percent feed their pigs kitchen waste, but hogs consume up to 62.5 percent of the nation’s kitchen waste. If banned, properly disposing about 2,115 tonnes of kitchen waste produced daily would create a new challenge for local governments. Pig farmers have accused the Taichung City Government of not responding fast enough. They said the city received a report of the deaths of more than a dozen pigs at the farm on Oct. 14, but did not test for pathogens, and did not collect specimens for testing until Monday last week, after 117 pigs had died. Local news agencies reported that Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) had asked them to promote a city shopping event, instead of answering questions about the ASF incident.
While prosecutors have stepped in to investigate, the local government should set aside political partisanship and work with the central government to resolve the ASF crisis, as pork is a central part of the nation’s agricultural industry, generating more than NT$80 billion (US$2.6 billion) annually. The central government should take this opportunity to re-evaluate the nation’s kitchen waste and disease prevention policies, while people must strictly follow customs rules and not smuggle pork products into Taiwan.
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