Asia - China educates farmers on pig-borne disease

Sichuan province in southwestern China has launched a campaign to educate poor, illiterate farmers not to slaughter sick pigs or eat their meat after an outbreak of swine flu hit about 100 villages and killed at least 32 people. Sichuan, the country's top pork-producing province, has been forced to suspend all exports of chilled and frozen pork from Ziyang city and surrounding Neijiang prefecture to Hong Kong, where there have been 10 infections since 2004. More than 2 million notices have been issued in affected areas informing farmers of the dangers, the China Daily reported on Saturday, quoting a vice mayor of Ziyang, situated near the provincial capital, Chengdu. About 50,000 health workers and officials have been sent to the areas to inspect and register every pig, and authorities have set up 39 temporary roadside quarantine stations to stop dead pigs from reaching markets. "It's having a big effect ... In Sichuan, no one is buying meat or slaughtering hogs," Xie Hong of the animal feed company Southern Hope Co., part of the New Hope Group, told Reuters. Pork is China's favourite meat and the country consumes more of it than anywhere else in the world. Of 618 million pigs slaughtered in 2004, Sichuan accounted for about 14 percent. Authorities say victims were suffering from Streptococcus suis bacteria, or swine flu, an infection contracted from slaughtering, handling or eating infected pigs. The disease, first reported in Neijiang, has spread to Chengdu itself and four other Sichuan cities. One case has been reported in the southern province of Guangdong near Hong Kong. Two factories have resumed production of a vaccine used years ago to control previous outbreaks of swine flu. Health officials in Sichuan and Beijing have been tight-lipped about the outbreak, which was discovered on June 24. Most low-income farmers insist on slaughtering sick pigs and eating the meat themselves instead of burying the carcasses with heavy disinfectant at their own expense, the China Daily said. "If animals die from some unknown disease, most farmers deal with the carcass themselves and then eat the meat," it said. "Many farmers became sick after eating suspect pork." An official at the China Centre for Disease Control and Prevention blamed the outbreak on unsanitary conditions at Sichuan's small-scale pig farms combined with a heatwave. One victim, Li Haiqing, 55, lives in a single-storey house in Guashi village with 15 pigs, two of which have died, confined to a damp, dark and smelly sty across from his bedroom. Wang Xingcheng, 55, a farmer in Renli village, developed a fever and lost hearing after eating infected pork. His brother who handled dead pigs had a fever for a few days while other members of the family remained healthy. Many small-scale slaughter houses operate illegally and elude inspection checks. Such pork is sold to underground processors. "No one likes to bother the local epidemic prevention station," one local veterinarian was quoted as saying. Beijing has banned pig and pork imports from Sichuan and set up checkpoints on roads leading to the capital to block diseased pork and avert a health threat to its 15 million residents. Swine flu is endemic in most pig-rearing countries but human infections are rare. Although China's state media have said no human-to-human infections had been found in Sichuan, the death toll is considered unusually high. Swine flu is not known ever to have been passed between humans, but scientists fear it could mutate into a bug that could easily pass among people, unleashing a deadly epidemic.