Amid widening avian influenza outbreaks, the Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan (EAST) yesterday called on the Council of Agriculture to provide scientific evidence to substantiate its statements that the virus strains were carried into Taiwan by migratory birds, saying they could be locally generated as a result of poultry farmers giving their birds illegal vaccines.
Citing what he said were “internal meeting minutes” taken during the highly pathogenic H5N2 outbreak that hit Taiwan in 2010, which affected three chicken farms, EAST chief executive Wu Hung (朱增宏) told a press conference in Taipei that the H5N2 strain, first detected locally in 2003, had undergone viral recombination with other local subtypes and become localized over the interval between the outbreaks.
National Taiwan University Institute of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine professor King Chawn-chueng (金傳春) said the surface gene of 16 H5N2 subtypes she discovered at a slaughterhouse in northern Taiwan in 2012 and 2013 through an inspection, which she carried out with University of Hong Kong virologist Guan Yi (管軼), linked the viruses to the H5N2 strain found locally in 2003, both of which can be traced back further to 1994, when an outbreak struck Mexico, as they bear a significant similarity in their surface genes.
However, the viruses’ internal genes are strictly “Oriental,” she said.
In addition, blood samples the duo took from about 800 chickens at the aforementioned slaughterhouse showed that more than 640 chickens had high concentration levels of antibodies for H9N2 — a subtype that had not previously been recorded in Taiwan.
The findings echoed those detailed by Lee Min-hsu (李敏旭), a researcher at the Animal Health Research Institute, in his research published in 2008, which made the same conclusion about the origins of the H5N2 strain in 2003, adding that the recombination between South American and Oriental subtypes “obviously deviated from the norm of short-term evolution.”
As such, both academics inferred that the new H5N2 strain currently sweeping Taiwan is the product of a combination between the locally found H5N2 and an overseas counterpart brought into Taiwan through substandard live or attenuated vaccines, which allowed the two strains to undergo viral recombination.
“Low-quality vaccines could have been smuggled and offered to poultry farmers,” Wu said.
He urged the council to launch a thorough investigation into the environments, management styles and hygienic practices at poultry farms, while also urging it to publicize the complete genome sequences of the H5N2, H5N2 variant, H5N8 and H5N3 virus subtypes currently sweeping the nation, thereby enabling veterinary medicine experts to offer their insight in combating avian flu.
Animal Health Research Institute Director-General Tsai Hsiang-jung (蔡向榮) responded by saying that “we are very skeptical about the information presented in King’s paper.”
Tsai said his institute had also taken samples from the facility that King had informed him about, but found very low levels of the H9N2 antibody.
He said the institute would make the complete genome sequences — which consist of eight segments — of the strains available within a week.
Asked to comment on Tsai’s response, Wu said the agency should publicize the details of its inspection, including the number of samples it took and the time the inspection was conducted, to back its claims.
“King’s article was published in May last year by the Journal of Virology. If the institute has been continuously monitoring avian flu viruses, it should provide the details of its inspections so a cross-reference can be conducted to find out the facts,” he said.
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