According to Council of Agriculture (COA) data, the avian flu outbreak has cooled down, so the next phase of the government's response will focus on rehabilitation and rebuilding of the poultry industry, Vice Premier Chang San-cheng stated today.
The vice premier said this while presiding over the ninth meeting of the Executive Yuan's avian flu response center. In the future the response center will convene meetings as deemed necessary, and relevant ministries and agencies must remain alert and keep watch, he added. Meanwhile, the COA must update its Internet data to keep track of the outbreak's latest developments.
The COA stated that as of 6 p.m. yesterday (March 6), 14 counties and cities had sent in samples for inspection from 908 farms. Of these, 884 farms were ascertained to have been infected with H5 avian flu subtypes; 23 farms were diagnosed negative; and one farm had an H6N1 subtype, which is not a pathogen reported by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).
In total 4,468,737 poultry animals were culled from the 884 infected farms. Since early March, the samples delivered, confirmed cases of infection, and animals culled have each been in the single digits every day.
Regarding avian flu infections found among the COA's Livestock Research Institute's "sentinel chickens" and at the Changhua Animal Propagation Station, Vice Premier Chang instructed the COA to conduct scrupulous examination and review, and to prevent similar incidents from happening again. The COA stated that such cases demonstrated the rampancy of avian flu viruses in the environment and added that these viruses must be fully eradicated before proceeding with subsequent rehabilitation tasks.
Relevant agencies have already adjusted their standard operation procedures for poultry-raising operations in order to stringently monitor the quantity and health of sentinel chickens. (Sentinel chickens are unvaccinated and raised in a pollution-free environment. They are used to test whether a farm is free of pathogen viruses. If a sentinel chicken lives beyond 21 days in a farm, the farm is free from infections, and vice versa if it dies during that period.)
The COA reported on its concrete measures for carrying out rehabilitation. They include encouraging young farmers to engage in poultry production, providing agricultural loans to help rebuild poultry farms, assisting in establishing demonstrative poultry housing enclosures, forming technological service teams to assist farmers in planning and technology instruction, conducting educational training courses, and onsite demonstration and observation.
To provide compensation for slaughtered animals, the COA stated that NT$1.56 billion (US$50.19 million) has been doled out to affected counties and cities from a special fund financed by centrally allotted tax revenues. Some NT$714.84 million (US$23.06 million) of this money has already been distributed by these governments, and about 89.9 percent of the poultry farms with culled animals have already received 60 percent of their entitled compensation.
Every Tuesday and Thursday the COA's Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine conducts review meetings. Any county or city that harbors doubts about compensation can voice their opinions to the bureau, which will expedite examinations and help county and city governments complete reviews by the end of April. Local governments should speedily disburse funds to farmers that have already been approved to receive the other 40 percent of their entitled compensation.
Vice Premier Chang also directed relevant ministries to closely monitor meat supplies and prices. The Ministry of Finance stated that it will, in coordination with the COA's needs and in line with the Customs Act, lower import tariffs for relevant commodities in a timely fashion in order to help stabilize domestic commodity prices and regulate their supply and demand.