mag
13-8-2005, 11:27 am
China will ramp up its imports of french fries by 20% a year through to 2010 or so. The U.S. is currently on track to sell over 70,000 metric tons of fries into China this year.
Recent figures show beef WA exports have risen 150% since 2000, with lamb and mutton exports rising 70%. However this has come at a cost where a lot of people are now buying cheaper cuts of meat, win some loose some.
BEIJING (Reuters) - Four officials have been sacked for trying to cover up the trail of dead pigs early in an outbreak of a swine-borne disease that has killed 39 people in southwest China, Xinhua news agency said on Monday. The officials, all from near Neijiang in Sichuan province, had fabricated reports and deceived inspectors and reporters tracing the spread of the Streptococcus suis bacteria, Xinhua said on its English Web site, www.chinaview.cn . More than 200 people have contracted the disease in Sichuan from slaughtering, handling or eating infected swine. Weeks into the outbreak that has killed around 650 pigs in the province, many poor farmers were apparently ignoring orders to safely dispose of sick and infected swine and were still butchering, eating and even selling them. The outbreak in China's top pork-producing province was first reported in June but did not surface in the Chinese media until almost a month later. China was widely criticised for initially covering up the 2002-2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which emerged in south China and spread across 30 nations, infecting nearly 8,500 people and killing about 800. Just over 100 victims were still in hospital in Sichuan and 10 were in critical condition, the Health Ministry said in an official statement. Streptococcus suis is endemic in most pig-rearing countries but human infections are rare. Although China's state media have said no human-to-human infections have been found in Sichuan, the death toll is considered unusually high. Overuse of antibiotics could be behind the outbreak by pushing the bacteria to mutate into a new, drug-resistant strain.
Recent figures show beef WA exports have risen 150% since 2000, with lamb and mutton exports rising 70%. However this has come at a cost where a lot of people are now buying cheaper cuts of meat, win some loose some.
BEIJING (Reuters) - Four officials have been sacked for trying to cover up the trail of dead pigs early in an outbreak of a swine-borne disease that has killed 39 people in southwest China, Xinhua news agency said on Monday. The officials, all from near Neijiang in Sichuan province, had fabricated reports and deceived inspectors and reporters tracing the spread of the Streptococcus suis bacteria, Xinhua said on its English Web site, www.chinaview.cn . More than 200 people have contracted the disease in Sichuan from slaughtering, handling or eating infected swine. Weeks into the outbreak that has killed around 650 pigs in the province, many poor farmers were apparently ignoring orders to safely dispose of sick and infected swine and were still butchering, eating and even selling them. The outbreak in China's top pork-producing province was first reported in June but did not surface in the Chinese media until almost a month later. China was widely criticised for initially covering up the 2002-2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which emerged in south China and spread across 30 nations, infecting nearly 8,500 people and killing about 800. Just over 100 victims were still in hospital in Sichuan and 10 were in critical condition, the Health Ministry said in an official statement. Streptococcus suis is endemic in most pig-rearing countries but human infections are rare. Although China's state media have said no human-to-human infections have been found in Sichuan, the death toll is considered unusually high. Overuse of antibiotics could be behind the outbreak by pushing the bacteria to mutate into a new, drug-resistant strain.