(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-08-23 20:50

China's Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) said on Thursday 47,000 pigs were infected by blue-ear pig disease in July, down 51.5 percent from the previous month.

Of the infected pigs, 13,000 died, down 35.9 percent, said the ministry spokesman Xue Liang.

"The epidemic across the country has been under much control," Xue said at a press conference.

Xue said by August 22, China had administered 314 million milliliters of vaccine to immunize more than 100 million pigs. By then, the disease had infected 257,000 pigs in 26 Chinese provinces, of which 68,000 died and 175,000 were destroyed.

The epidemic situation in regions along the Yangtze River is relatively more serious because the disease is inducible under wet and warm conditions, said the spokesman.

The ministry had sent 251 experts to the disease-stricken areas and printed more than 600,000 handbooks to publicize knowledge on the prevention and control of the disease, he said.

The highly pathogenic disease, also known as Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome, can be fatal for pigs, but the vaccinated pigs will no longer be infected by the disease, according to the ministry.

Twelve enterprises had been assigned to produce an effective vaccine against the disease with a daily production capacity of seven to ten million milliliters, said the spokesman.

The average wholesale price of pork from August 13 to 19 saw a week-on-week drop of 1.4 percent, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

It was the second consecutive weekly drop in pork prices, which have almost doubled in the last seven months due to short supply and mounting production costs.

Li Jinxiang, a veterinarian with the MOA, said China had timely reported the epidemic situation to the international community in line with regulations of the world organization for animal health (OIE).

The MOA had organized regular joint meetings with the Ministry of Health, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to discuss relevant policies and exchange disease-control technologies, according to Li.

Jia Youling, China's chief veterinary officer, said on Monday that the ministry had provided vaccine samples to Vietnam as requested but no international organization had asked China to provide tissue samples.

Guo Fusheng, a technical advisor with the FAO, has confirmed that the organization had not yet asked China for tissue samples.