Nearly 800 goats infected with goat pox virus (GPV) have been culled at two ranches in Yunlin County's Siluo Township in central-south Taiwan, animal health officials said Wednesday.

"The animals were slaughtered after two goats in the Yunlin meat wholesale market were found to have symptoms of GPV on April 9," said Huang Kuo-ching, deputy director of the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine (BAPHIQ) under the Council of Agriculture.

None of the infected animals had entered the retail market, Huang said, adding that sick goats were spotted by vets during routine health checks.

Staff members of the Yunlin animal health inspection and quarantine bureau immediately traveled to the two problem ranches to examine and test all the animals there, Huang said. A ban was also imposed on the movement of animals at both ranches, he added.

Follow-up tests at the BAPHIQ on samples collected at the ranches confirmed that the goats had contracted GPV, a highly contagious disease of small ruminants that is characterized by fever, ocular and nasal discharges. It also causes pox lesions on the skin and on the mucous membranes of the nostrils, mouth and vulva. Mortality can be high. Most kids and lambs with the disease tend to die and the death rate among adult animals is around 50 percent.

GPV cannot infect humans and can be destroyed at high temperatures, according to Huang.

To prevent the spread of the virus, all of the animals on the two farms were culled and the farms disinfected, Huang said.

The bureau has already informed the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) of the case, he added. According to OIE regulations, Taiwan will be removed from the list of sheep and goat pox (SGP) affected areas if no new cases are reported in the next three years.

This is the second time that the disease has been reported in Taiwan. The first outbreak was in July 2008 in northern Taiwan's Taoyuan County, Huang said.

China Daily/CNA

(HK Edition 04/15/2010 page3)