A mysterious illness that has swept through pig populations in southern China and killing at least 300 of the animals has been identified as a strain of "blue ear disease," state media said Wednesday. The official Xinhua News Agency said that an effective vaccine has already been developed and authorities soon will start to administer it to pigs in Guangdong province.
That was fast! Could the Center for Disease Control accomplish such a thing so quickly?
The disease spread to China in the mid-1990s, and the recent outbreak was a caused by a new mutation, it said.
Blue ear disease is also known as porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome or PRRS, and was first identified in the United States in 1987, according to the World Organization for Animal Health. The pigs in Guangdong showed symptoms typical of the disease, including loss of appetite, fever and bleeding, Xinhua said.
The affected pigs were all raised by individual households instead of large-scale farms and were not for export, it said. Hong Kong media said Monday that 1,300 pigs were believed to have been infected. |