Taiwan will soon be recognized as free of foot-and-mouth disease and a place where vaccines are no longer needed for the swine population. The move will pave the way for more fresh pork exports. The Council of Agriculture said Monday that the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) is likely to give Taiwan that designation next week.
Currently, Taiwan’s only exports cooked and processed pork products to a few countries. The council says fresh pork exports will begin in the second half of the year. The first market will be Singapore, which will begin importing Taiwanese pork in July.
In 1997, Taiwan saw a major outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, which devastated the NT$60 billion (US$2 billion) pork export industry. At the time, Taiwan had over ten million pigs. It had to cull four million of them and vaccinate the rest. In 2019, Taiwan had over 5.5 million pigs, worth NT$70 billion (US$2.4 billion).
Last July, Taiwan applied for the designation of FMD free without vaccination, after seeing a full year of no new cases. On May 13, 2020, the OIE informed Taiwan that it was qualified, and would give Taiwan the official status in early June.