China has brought blue-ear pig disease under control, Gao
Hongbin, vice minister of agriculture, said at a press conference
held on Monday.
The disease, which has been on the decline since it peaked in
June, has been checked within all the epidemic outbreak areas, he
said.
By Oct. 25, the highly pathogenic disease, also known as Porcine
Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome, had infected 310,134 pigs in
1,030 epidemic outbreaks in 304 counties of 26 Chinese provincial
areas, of which 81,030 died and 235,380 were culled, he said.
The dangerous husbandry disease can be fatal for pigs and is
highly infectious. There is no effective cure to it, but vaccinated
pigs are immune. The disease does no harm to human beings.
China has been carrying out a vaccination program and has
tightened supervision on the transportation, trading and
slaughtering of pigs to combat the disease, said Gao.
The epidemic has caused pork supply shortage and fuelled price
rises in recent months, which resulted in a 6.5-percent increase in
the consumer price index in August, an 11-year high.
Central and local governments have promised a fund of 14.6
billion yuan (US$1.9 billion) this year to encourage farmers to
raise pigs and boost pork supplies.
By Oct. 18, the average price of pork in Chinese shops had
dropped 11 percent from its peak in August.
Yet pressure on inflation from foodstuffs remained. For
instance, in one week in October the price of peanut oil soared 10
percent in a single week in southern China's Guangdong
Province.
China's consumer price index rose by 4.1 percent in the first
nine months of this year compared with the same period in 2006, and
the annual rate is expected to hit 4.5 percent by the year end.
Chinese police have arrested the producers of fake vaccines
believed to have caused an outbreak of the blue-ear pig disease in
central China's Hubei Province, the ministry of Agriculture said on
Sunday.
A stock farm in Jiangling county of Hubei bought a batch of
vaccine for the blue-ear pig disease in June through an illegal
channel from Beijing, which resulted in an outbreak of the deadly
pig epidemic, causing nearly 1 million yuan (US$133,690) of loss,
said a ministry spokesman.
Investigations showed that the vaccines were fake products
without any production licence and that the company did not
exist.
Beijing police have arrested a key suspect and smashed three
workshops that made the fake vaccine.
(Xinhua News Agency October 30, 2007)