China fights against spread of foot-and-mouth

Chinese medical staff disinfect a truck from Mongolia at the border city of Erenhot

In this story: China denies disease has hit mainland Double blow Mass slaughter in Taiwan RELATED STORIES, SITES

By Rose Tang
CNN Correspondent

HONG KONG, China -- China is stepping up its vaccination and quarantine controls in provinces bordering Mongolia where foot-and-mouth and mad cow diseases are rife.

A senior official at the Ministry of Agriculture in Beijing told CNN that vaccination stations have been set up in Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang to prevent an outbreak of the epidemics crossing the border.

"Chinese animals are retreating 60 kilometers (37 miles) to 100 kilometers away from the border, mainly in Inner Mongolia," he said, asking not to be named.

While declining to describe how the animals are being herded back, the official said most of them were also being vaccinated.

China is stepping up its vaccination and quarantine control in provinces bordering Mongolia.

China denies disease has hit mainland

He reiterated that there are no reports of either foot-and-mouth or mad cow disease in China and that the trade ministry continues to export animal products.

However, Western agricultural experts say foot-and-mouth disease is widespread in China.

China denies foot-and-mouth is widespread in the country

In 1999, China culled about 1,000 cattle, sheep and pigs in Fujian province, Tibet and Hainan island where foot-and-mouth disease ravaged.

But the government failed to vaccinate hoofed animals after the outbreaks.

"Vaccinations are only targeted at outbreaks in foreign countries," the official added.

"Now we're also strengthening the border quarantine control. We do that whenever there are outbreaks in neighboring countries."

China conducted similar quarantine campaigns in provinces bordering Burma and Mongolia last year after foot-and-mouth outbreaks, he said.

In Mongolia, more than 600 cattle and sheep have been destroyed for the foot-and-mouth outbreaks, including 14 in the capital, Ulaanbaatar.

Double blow

China's official Xinhua news agency has reported that Mongolian cattle are also suffering from mad cow disease, or BSE, with one outbreak county only kilometers away from the Chinese border in Inner Mongolia.

Xinhua quoted a Mongolian newspaper as saying mad cow disease had spread to six counties since the first case was detected in January.

"We have put in lots of human resources and money to strengthen nationwide quarantine inspections," said the Beijing agricultural official.

He denied suggestions that meats smuggled out of China may have helped the spread of foot-and-mouth disease in Europe.

The Times of London reported Tuesday that the British government was investigating contaminated meats smuggled from Asia or the Middle East and served in a Chinese restaurant as a possible source of the outbreak in Britain.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi said there was no evidence to prove the allegations.

China in March last year denied allegations from Japan and South Korea that hay imported from China was responsible for foot-and-mouth outbreaks in both countries.

And the Beijing agricultural official denied outbreaks in Taiwan and Hong Kong were caused by exported or smuggled Chinese animals or products.

"China has been severely cracking down on the smuggling of animal products," he said.

Mass slaughter in Taiwan

The Taiwanese government has alleged most of its foot-and-mouth outbreaks over the years were triggered by animals smuggled from China.

Smuggling of frozen meats, live horses, cattle, pigs and dogs from China has been rife during recent years, said Watson Sung, deputy director general of the Bureau of Animal & Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine.

Sung said Taiwan had to slaughter 3.85 million pigs in 1997 in a mass outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease that was spread by infected pigs smuggled to the Taiwan-controlled Kinmen island off the coast of Fujian.

When the epidemic broke out again, in Fujian in 1999, Taiwan destroyed nearly one thousand cattle and sheep after the same Type O virus was found on the island.

"It was from the cattle smuggled via Kinmen," he said.

Taipei has since banned transportation of any animals from Kinmen.

"For years we were worried about an invasion from China, now we are more afraid of those cattle from there. That's why we call these animals Communist cattle," says one Kinmen resident.

Taiwan has been banned from exporting meat since 1997. Three pigs were destroyed in February after a routine inspection found the virus at a meat market in Taipei.

Sung said the pigs might have caught the virus during transportation, but tests show the strain didn't match that found in smuggled animals.

Asian meat suspected as foot-and-mouth source
March 27, 2001

Chinese Ministry of Agriculture
Foot-and-Mouth Disease
Taiwanese Council of Agriculture

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