On January 2, 2020, The Taiwan Animal and Plant
Disease center announced the culling of more than 23,000 chickens on the
poultry farm in Yunlin County on New Year’s day due to avian flu breakout.
According to the authorities, the culling was conducted on a farm on Dounan
Township after it was confirmed. The Yunlin County, Animal, and Plant health
pointed out that last year the county’s bird flu positive farms were 53 and the
total number of poultry that was culled were 28.9million, which according to
the industry expert suggest that the number of positive farms suffering from
avian influenza has been decreasing year by year, which indicates the success
of national epidemic prevention policy in recent years. Furthermore, the policy
and the concept and technology of the owner’s independent epidemic prevention
have gradually improved, but there are still a handful of the farmers that are
negligent in the prevention and require further training and education.
Since the outbreak of avian influenza and its spread
among the human in 2013, the Chinese governments has taken various serious
measure to control the spread along with the support of WHO. The disease
control departments in various parts of the country started focusing on
strengthening disease prevention and surveillance among poultry industry
workers, enhancing the sanitation of LPM’s and ensuring hygiene during poultry
slaughter and transactions. Furthermore, the Ministry of Agriculture active
surveillance in animals and the environment at multiple sites while the Chinese
Centre for Disease Control isolated and identified the virus from the patients.
All these techniques and education about the virus and its prevention proved
successful and reduced the number of human infections in recent year.
However, due to increasingly blurry human-animal
interaction, the zoonotic infections are increasing at an unprecedented rate.
Furthermore, though the Chinese poultry is shifting from backyard farming to
more commercialized poultry farming but there are still many backyard farms
without any biosecurity, which create a challenge for MOA to conduct routine
avian disease surveillance. Moreover, the unique trade model in China,” company+
peasant household”, creates opportunities for H7N9 influenza virus to transmit
from poultry farms to wholesale markets, where different genotypes avian
influenza virus can reassert. Therefore, to control the spread the cooperation
between the country’s agriculture departments and public health departments
should be strengthened. Furthermore, instant and regular flow of information
from agriculture to the disease control department should be practiced to
ensure timely actions.