Excellent foot-and-mouth disease prevention performance: Hualien County wins first place in its group in the national evaluation

To strengthen foot-and-mouth disease prevention measures and reduce the risk of outbreaks, the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine of the Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan, evaluated the implementation results of each county and city based on assessment indicators such as the submission rate of livestock farms for monitoring, disinfection and prevention measures, and plan execution rates. It recently presented awards at the National Animal Disease Prevention Business Liaison Meeting to commend the outstanding counties and cities for year 108 (2019). Hualien County achieved excellent prevention results and won first place in Group 2 (those with more than 70,000 but fewer than 300,000 pigs on hand) in the evaluation of foot-and-mouth disease prevention implementation results.

Wu Kun-ju, Director of the Hualien County Agriculture Department, said that looking back at the large-scale outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the 86th year of the Republic of China (1997), the number of pig farmers dropped sharply by nearly 5,000 households within a year, and the number of pigs on hand decreased by nearly 3 million. Together with the impact on related industries such as feed, slaughtering, processing, and export, the overall national economic loss within one year was estimated at more than 170 billion yuan, a disastrous toll. After the foot-and-mouth disease storm, through 23 years of effort, with active input from industry, government, academia, and research sectors and concerted efforts to overcome difficulties, in June of this year it was finally recognized by the OIE as a foot-and-mouth disease-free area. In the future, the county government will continue to conduct clinical visits and outreach at livestock farms with each township office, strengthen inspection of transport vehicles and disinfection work in related sites, and carry out serological monitoring and other prevention work at livestock farms.

County Magistrate Xu Zhen-wei said that Hualien County's achievement of first place in Group 2 in the evaluation of foot-and-mouth disease prevention implementation results is the result of joint efforts by the prevention team and farmers across the county's livestock industry. However, biosecurity must not be relaxed. The county government will strongly monitor and implement prevention regulations, make every effort to block the disease and avoid major economic losses, and ensure farmers' livelihoods and the sustainable development of the pig farming industry.