Blue-ear pig disease has been brought under "preliminary control" through vaccinations and mass culls of infected pigs, Jia Youling, China's chief veterinary officer, said on Monday.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA), as of August 19, the disease had infected 257,000 pigs in 26 Chinese provinces, of which 68,000 died and 175,000 were destroyed.

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 Jia.

He said 12 enterprises had been assigned to produce an effective vaccine against the disease with a daily production capacity of seven to ten million milliliters.

"China has so far administered 2.96 million milliliters of vaccines to protect more than 100 million pigs from the disease and no blue-ear diseases have been found in places that have completed the vaccination process," said Jia.

"People are no longer scared of the disease because they know what the disease is and how to deal with it," Jia claimed.

In response to criticisms that China had downplayed the outbreak of the disease, Jia said the Chinese government had been "open and transparent" about the disease and has provided regular updates to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE).

"This has prevented unnecessary suspicion and misunderstandings and helped the international community understand the situation," said Jia.

Jia did admit that local authorities might have covered up the number of infected pigs. However, the number of diseased pigs was nowhere near as big as reported in some foreign media, he stressed.

The New York Times reported last week that China failed to send tissue samples of affected pigs to labs outside the country and the lack of transparency about the disease was creating fears of a global pandemic.

Jia said the ministry had provided vaccine samples to Vietnam as requested but no international organization had asked China to provide tissue samples.

He said his ministry would be happy to cooperate with other countries to fight the disease.

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

(Xinhua News Agency August 21, 2007)