After listening to the Council of Agriculture's (COA) report on bird flu prevention, including response measures during the Lunar New Year festival (February 18-23), Premier Mao Chi-kuo at today's Cabinet meeting emphasized that "there is no holiday from fighting the epidemic." He instructed the COA and other relevant agencies to strengthen various measures, such as by carrying out thorough disinfection when markets are closed for rest, to reduce environmental hazards and contain the epidemic as soon as possible.
One of the affected farmers' biggest concerns is the distribution of compensation for culled poultry, Mao pointed out. As of February 11, more than 70 percent of affected farms have received compensation from their county or city government. The premier asked the COA to keep on supervising the local governments to step up the administration procedures and ensure that all affected farmers receive at least part of their entitled compensation before the Lunar New Year.
In addition to working hard to eliminate the epidemic among chickens, agencies should also check possible infection sources and routes more comprehensively, Mao indicated. Regarding ducks that can carry the virus, only 59.1 percent of sampling and detecting tasks have been completed for duck farms located within one kilometer of farms with reported cases. Mao urged the COA to speed up these tasks in order to know the state of virus activity as early as possible. He also instructed the agency to implement the follow-up measures in the farms with confirmed cases in order to stop the epidemic from spreading and avoid the localization of the viruses.