Less Alarm in Hong Kong Over Disease of Livestock - NYT 4/9/01

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April 8, 2001 - New York Times

 

Less Alarm in Hong Kong Over Disease of Livestock

 

By MARK LANDLER

 

HONG KONG, April 7 — In Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair has mobilized

the

army to bury a half- million slaughtered sheep in a desperate attempt to

contain

foot-and- mouth disease. But in Hong Kong, which has more confirmed cases of

the

disease than Britain, the official response can best be described as relaxed.

 

No animals have been slaughtered, no restrictions have been placed on the sale

of meat and there is no ban on importing meat or dairy products from other

countries with the disease. When pigs die after having the disease — as at

least

574 have in the last year — some farmers simply dump the carcasses on the side

of the road in secluded parts of the New Territories.

 

"We get a lot of these," said a sanitation worker the other day as she

sprinkled

lime on a dead pig a few feet from a sign warning farmers not to dispose of

animals there.

 

Foot-and-mouth disease is more a nuisance than a crisis in this former British

colony for several reasons. The disease has been endemic in Asia for nearly 50

years. In the last year there have been 3,282 confirmed cases here in Hong

Kong,

compared with 1,061 in Britain.

 

Hong Kong does not export pork or other meat, which means it does not have to

worry about conforming to the health standards of its trading partners. But

other Asian countries, like South Korea and Taiwan do export, and

foot-and-mouth

disease has devastated their livestock industries.

 

South Korea slaughtered more than 350,000 cattle last year after an outbreak of

the disease, while Taiwan destroyed 3.8 million pigs in 1997. Hong Kong rears

only 440,000 pigs on 300 farms, and it is sensitive to any suggestion that it

may have spread the disease.

 

Britain said recently that its epidemic might have started with pig swill being

contaminated by illegally imported tainted meat.

 

Officials here said it was unlikely that the meat had come from Hong Kong

because the strain of the foot- and-mouth virus in Britain is different from

that found in pigs here.

 

With the disease so deeply rooted in Hong Kong — and in mainland China and

Taiwan — the authorities have sought to contain it with vaccinations.

 

"People say that if you're not slaughtering animals, you're not taking it

seriously enough," said Leslie Sims, the government's assistant director of

agriculture quarantine. "But if we did that we would be quickly re-infected.

The

other approach is to try to live with the disease."

 

Dr. Sims was one of the first experts who investigated the deadly avian flu in

Hong Kong in 1997. In that case, he said, it made sense for Hong Kong to kill

more than a million chickens because it successfully stamped out a virus that

posed a serious threat to human beings. Foot-and-mouth has much less effect on

people.

 

This month the British government said it would consider vaccinating animals —

an option once considered untenable because it could bar the country from

exporting livestock and meat for at least a year.

 

Hong Kong's low-key approach to vaccination, however, has its limits. Farmers

are supposed to administer two doses a year to pigs, one just before they go to

market. That costs about $3 a head. To save money, some farmers give only one

injection or skip the procedure altogether.

 

Despite the general agreement that foot-and-mouth disease is under control,

there is some dispute over how widespread it is. Farmers say 6,000 pigs have

died in the last year, 10 times the official estimate. Dr. Sims acknowledged

that some farmers did not report cases because they feared damaging their

livelihood.

 

The same fear may account for the clandestine way farmers dispose of pigs.

They

are supposed to leave the carcasses at one of 78 collection places and call the

authorities to cart them away. But many simply stuff them into feed bags and

dump them on the roadside in the middle of the night.

 

It is a jarring image for a city that prides itself on its first-world

amenities. On a recent Monday morning, the carcasses of 10 pigs were found in

or

near public trash cans in the New Territories. At one bus stop, commuters in

suits stepped gingerly around a dead pig to get on a bus.

 

"This is really a nuisance for people, and also a potential health hazard,

since

it attracts dogs, rodents and insects," said Lo Wing-lok, a specialist in

infectious disease. "The government has to upgrade its enforcement."