Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Prosecutors raid bureau over flu row

CONSPIRACY?:The BAPHIQ denies a cover-up, but an opposition lawmaker said officials might have kept the H5N2 outbreak quiet to help Ma’s re-election hopes
By Chris Wang  /  Staff Reporter
Tue, Mar 06, 2012 - Page 1

Investigators yesterday raided the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine (BAPHIQ) and seized a number of documents as the government continued to field criticism over its handling of a bird flu outbreak.

Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office spokesperson Huang Mo-hsin (黃謀信) said prosecutors questioned several bureau officials regarding the recent outbreak of H5N2 avian influenza.

Huang said the bureau is suspected of covering up the outbreak and prosecutors are trying to determine whether officials might have committed offenses that amount to malfeasance while in office, which carry a prison sentence of between three and 10 years.

Hsu Tien-lai (許天來), a former director of the bureau who resigned on Sunday, would be questioned soon, Huang added.

Meanwhile, opposition legislators blasted President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration over the alleged cover-up, saying that food safety in Taiwan was “out of control” and that senior officials, including Ma, should be held accountable.

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) legislators said that Hsu’s resignation was not the end of the matter.

Ma, vice president-elect Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), Premier Sean Chen (陳?), as well as Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Bao-ji (陳保基) and former Council of Agriculture minister Chen Wu-hsiung (陳武雄) should all shoulder responsibility for the foul-up, the opposition lawmakers said.

Wu and Sean Chen were premier and vice premier respectively at the time the outbreak was discovered.

The council confirmed on Saturday that strains of the H5N2 avian influenza virus in Changhua County and Greater Tainan were highly pathogenic and that more than 57,000 chickens had been culled to prevent the virus from spreading.

However, the announcement came more than 70 days after Kevin H. J. Lee (李惠仁), a freelance journalist who spent more than six years investigating avian influenza in Taiwan and directed a documentary entitled A Secret That Can’t Be Exposed (不能戳的秘密), reported a possible lethal case of H5N2 to the council.

If there was an attempt to cover-up the outbreak, then the administration could have violated the regulations of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE).

BAPHIQ Deputy Director General Huang Kwo-ching (黃國青) yesterday denied the accusations of a cover-up, saying the council had to await the results of lab tests and weigh other factors before confirming the seriousness of the outbreak.

Huang said the council had carried out an inspection and conducted tests after learning that an egg-laying chicken farm in Changhua reported an outbreak of the virus on Dec. 27.

“After the preliminary results came out, we reported them to the OIE on Jan. 10,” Huang said, citing this as evidence that the council was not trying to hide a potential outbreak of bird flu.

However, according to TSU whip Hsu Chung-hsin (許忠信), a cover-up might have been undertaken to protect Ma’s re-election chances in the Jan. 14 presidential poll, since Lee made his report of a suspected case in late December, three weeks before the election.

“We suspect that Hsu [Tien-lai] is just a scapegoat because an official of his status would not dare to conceal a bird flu outbreak; that would be handled at the national security level,” Hsu Chung-hsin told reporters.

Hsu Chung-hsin said experts have warned that a mutation of the virus could cause it to affect humans, despite claims by the council that H5N2 is not harmful to humans.

The DPP released a three-point statement on the alleged cover-up, DPP spokesperson Lin Yu-chang (林右昌) told reporters.

The DPP said senior officials should be held accountable because according to the party, the government had placed its own political consideration above the assessment of professionals.

The DPP also demanded complete transparency regarding the government’s efforts to prevent the spread of the outbreak as well as assistance and compensation for the farmers who were impacted by such measures.

Lin said Ma has a poor record of handling threats to food safety and public health throughout his public service career, citing the SARS outbreak in 2003 when Ma served as Taipei mayor, the Chinese tainted milk scandal, the US beef dispute related to mad cow disease, the ongoing cases of animal feed additive ractopamine and now the bird flu virus.

“Food safety and public health are out of control. The Ma administration has learned nothing from the past and the worst thing is that the government tried to cheat the public,” he said.

The DPP caucus demanded an apology from Ma for failing to adopt the appropriate measures to handle the outbreak in a timely manner and it urged the Control Yuan to investigate to see if Wu, Sean Chen, Chen Bao-ji and Chen Wu-hsiung were negligent, DPP whip Pan Men-an (潘孟安) said.

DPP Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) said it would be difficult for the council to explain why it took the bureau three weeks to confirm the outbreak after the Greater Tainan Government reported suspected cases of H5N2 to the council’s Animal Health Research Institute on Feb. 8.

DPP Legislator Lee Ying-yuan (李應元), who was convener of an inter-agency task force to fight an H5N1 outbreak between 2005 and 2006, said the previous DPP administration had contained the H5N1 outbreak by “recognizing the urgency of the situation, taking the matter seriously and dealing with the outbreak as a threat to national security.”

Meanwhile, the Department of Health said the H5N2 strain was highly pathogenic among birds, but that there was insufficient evidence to prove that the strain could cross between humans and animals.

Department of Health Deputy Minister Lin Tzou-yien (林奏延) said similar outbreaks have -occurred among turkeys and ducks in the US, Mexico, Japan, South Korea, the Middle East and South Africa.

Based on global precedent and analysis of reports, Lin said there is no convincing evidence to suggest that the H5N2 virus can be transmitted to people.

He said H5N2 is different from the H5N1 strain, which has infected 590 people worldwide and killed 349, mostly in Southeast Asia.

Lin said there was no reason to panic and that eggs and poultry are edible as long as they are fully cooked.

He said nine people at the infected Changhua farm had all tested negative for avian flu.

Blood samples from 29 of the 38 people at the Tainan farm have been collected, Lin added, saying that his department would collect samples from the remaining nine people and continue to monitor their health.

He added that during an H5N2 outbreak in Japan in 2005 and 2006, 48 of the 257 people at a farm tested positive for H5N2 antibodies, but none developed flu-like symptoms.

Additional reporting by Rich Chang and CNA