About 20,000 chickens were destroyed on a farm in Fangyuan Township in Changhua County early yesterday morning after the avian-flu virus subtype H5N2 was discovered among the fowl.
Kuo Chou-che (
As of noon yesterday, his office had not yet decided whether the destroyed chickens should be incinerated or buried in a landfill, Kuo said.
In addition to destroying all the chickens on the affected farm, departmental authorities have also sterilized the farm as well as agricultural land and other properties within a 3km radius
Animal health officials have intensified random inspections of all poultry farms in Changhua County in an effort to prevent the spread of the disease.
Meanwhile, the affected farm will not be allowed to resume operations until two months after it is declared completely free of the virus, Kuo said.
Although it has been known for some time that a wide range of influenza viruses circulate among wild birds, only two types have ever been known to infect humans.
These are two subtypes of the influenza A virus, known as H5N1 and H5N2.
An avian-flu case has never been reported in Taiwan, but monitoring of migratory birds last year led to the discovery of the H5 virus in some of the birds. Fortunately, it was not the H5N1 subtype and it was not transmitted to any birds in Taiwan.
The H5N1 subtype of the virus was found last year in ducks smuggled into Taiwan, but the ducks were destroyed immediately and the virus was contained, Department of Health officials said.
Also see story:
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
‘SIGN OF DANGER’: Beijing has never directly named Taiwanese leaders before, so China is saying that its actions are aimed at the DPP, a foundation official said National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) yesterday accused Beijing of spreading propaganda, saying that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had singled out President William Lai (賴清德) in his meeting with US President Joe Biden when talking about those whose “true nature” seek Taiwanese independence. The Biden-Xi meeting took place on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru on Saturday. “If the US cares about maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait, it is crucial that it sees clearly the true nature of Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in seeking Taiwanese independence, handles the Taiwan question with extra
RSS