The Ministry of Agriculture published a press release Monday,
saying that China paid great importance to the prevention and
control of bird flu.
Since the beginning of this year after the outbreak of bird flu
in the country, the ministry had launched a large-scale monitoring
project across the country, carried out pathogenic and serological
check on over 1.1 million samples of poultry and some samples of
pigs. The result showed that there was no pig infected by bird flu
virus.
The officials said that the ministry had reported the results to
international organizations, like Food and Agricultural
Organization and World Health Organizations.
The released said that an expert mentioned China's finding of
the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu in pigs in 2003 and had
published the research results openly at the beginning of this
year. Relative international research shows that bird flu virus
could not only infect poultry, but also mammal animals.
(China Daily August 24, 2004)