|
Top official resigns
over H5N2 scandal
COVER-UP? A journalist said he sent a dead
chicken to authorities on Dec. 25 that he suspected had died of H5N2, but
officials told him the virus wasn’t highly pathogenic
By Lee I-chia / Staff Reporter
A bird is sprayed with liquid in
a pet shop on Heping West Road in Taipei yesterday following news of an outbreak
of H5N2 avian influenza.
Photo: CNA
Bureau of Animal and Plant Health
Inspection and Quarantine director Hsu Tien-lai (許天來) resigned yesterday amid
allegations he covered up a bird flu outbreak, a day after authorities announced
they had culled thousands of chickens.
The Council of Agriculture yesterday said Hsu’s resignation had been approved
and that his case has been sent to the Control Yuan for investigation.
The council held an emergency press conference on Saturday to announce that
specialists had confirmed strains of the H5N2 avian influenza virus in Changhua
County and Greater Tainan were highly pathogenic and that 57,500 chickens had
been culled to prevent the virus from spreading.
Hsu said the chickens from the reported sites had all been culled and sanitizing
measures had been completed within a 3km perimeter around the sites.
Yang Wen-yuan (楊文淵), a division director at the bureau, said in addition to the
two cases in Changhua and Tainan, another case of H5N2 had been reported in
Changhua as well as two in Nantou County, but so far on-site investigations had
not revealed signs of exceptional clinical symptoms.
Council of Agriculture Deputy Minister Wang Cheng-teng (王政騰) reiterated that it
has been scientifically proven that H5N2 only inflects birds and does not affect
humans.
Wang said export losses for egg products was estimated at between NT$500 million
(US$17 million) and NT$700 million.
A new director of the bureau has not yet been chosen, Wang said.
According to Kevin H. J. Lee (李惠仁), a freelance journalist who spent more than
six years investigating avian influenza in Taiwan and directed a documentary
entitled A Secret That Can’t Be Exposed (不能戳的秘密), the council concealed the
truth about the virus.
Lee began his investigation after a mass outbreak of avian influenza in Changhua
in 2004, filming in chicken coops across the country and even dissecting dead
chickens to procure tissue samples for testing.
On Dec. 25 last year, Lee sent a dead chicken that he suspected was infected
with H5N2 avian influenza, along with the location of the farm in Changhua
County, to the bureau, but the bureau responded by saying that the virus was not
highly pathogenic.
“In the process of my investigation, I discovered the situation is very
different to what the council tells us. I discovered that the council has lied
about the whole thing since 2004,” Lee said.
“After analyzing the sampled genes, it was concluded that the avian influenza
found is an endemic avian influenza viral strain,” Hsu said on Saturday. “The
first case was found in Changhua on Dec. 27 and it has been dealt with this
morning. It was only yesterday [Friday] that the case was determined to be
highly pathogenic.”
Responding to questions from the media on why the bureau initially denied Lee’s
claim, but now says the virus is highly pathogenic, Hsu said clinical and
laboratory results lead to different conclusions — it had a low clinical death
rate, but genetic testing showed signs that it was highly pathogenic according
to the intravenous pathogenicity index method described by the World
Organization for Animal Health.
Huang Li-min (黃立民), a pediatrician at National Taiwan University Hospital, said
the virus might have existed for quite some time in Taiwan and that if people
had frequent contact with the birds, there was a possibility of infection.
|
