China Reins In Blue –Ear Disease

According to Jia Youling, China’ s chief veterinary officer, there is no cause for alarm over the swine ailment - Blue-ear pig disease.

Vaccinations and mass culls of infected pigs have served to bring the infections under "preliminary control", avers Youling.

Figures given by the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) quote around 257,000 infected pigs in 26 Chinese provinces , out of which 68,000 died and 175,000 were destroyed.

This highly pathogenic disease, which also goes by the name Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome, can be deadly for pigs. Yet, vaccinated pigs will no longer be infected by the disease, says a confident Jia.

According to Jia, 12 enterprises were given the duty of producing a vaccine that was effective against the disease, and a production capacity of seven to ten million milliliters, per day, was solicited. Claims Jia: "China has so far administered 2.96 million milliliters of vaccines to protect more than 100 million pigs from the disease and no blue-ear diseases have been found in places that have completed the vaccination process.

"People are no longer scared of the disease because they know what the disease is and how to deal with it," he adds.

Meanwhile, China has rejected criticism that it had downplayed an outbreak of the disease. Jia stresses that China has always been "open and transparent" about the disease, and has provided regular updates to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

"This has prevented unnecessary suspicion and misunderstandings and helped the international community understand the situation," says Jia.

The criticism had stemmed from a New York Times article last week, which alleged that Beijing had failed to share tissue samples of affected pigs with the international community. The article had also commented that China's lack of transparency about the disease was creating fears of a global pandemic.

In response, Jia had said that the ministry was prepared to provide such samples but that no international body had so far made such a request. Guo Fusheng, a technical advisor with the FAO, who said that the organization had not yet asked China for tissue samples, confirmed this.

Source-Medindia
ANN/J