(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-09-22 18:43

BANGKOK -- China is ready to share information and experience with the international community on animal disease surveillance and control regarding either bird flu or the blue ear pig disease, an official of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said.

FAO animal health expert Vincent Martin said in an interview with Xinhua on Friday that he did not agree with some Western media reports, which suggested the Chinese government was reluctant to report PRRS outbreaks and unwilling to share information on the disease, found so far in China and Vietnam, with the international community.

Martin is here to attend a two-day FAO emergency workshop opening Monday on the Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS), more commonly known as the blue ear pig disease.

Martin, now based in Beijing as an FAO technological coordinator, said the FAO is "very satisfied" with all the collaboration that the Chinese government has provided on disease control.

He said that from the very beginning in the summer of 2006 when China first detected in some provinces an outbreak of PRRS, the World Organization for Animal Health and the FAO have been kept informed by the Chinese government on the progress of the disease.

In 2007, Chinese scientists found it was a mutated, highly pathogenic form of the PRRS virus that had infected the pigs, and China submitted a timely report of the finding to the OIE and the FAO, Martin said.

"The Chinese government is doing their best," he said.

Martin and his colleagues in Beijing had earlier in the month visited Sichuan province and the nearby city of Chongqing in western China, which were among the most infected areas.

"From what I've seen there, the epidemic seemed to be receding across the country, and the situation is much better now," he said.

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