BEIJING, May 30 -- The Agriculture Ministry confirmed reports that hundreds of cattle with foot and mouth disease (FMD) had been slaughtered near Beijing since early May.

    Ministry officials insisted the case was "handled properly" even though the government failed to announce it sooner.

    Jia Youling, director of the Veterinary Bureau of the Agriculture Ministry, also defended the handling of a foot and mouth outbreak on a farm northwest of Beijing that health and agriculture officials previously refused to confirm.

    A total of 3,771 cattle were slaughtered this month to stop four separate outbreaks in Beijing, two other eastern cities and the northwestern region of Xinjiang, Jia said. That included 512 on a farm in Yanqing County near Beijing.

    Jia said the delay in reporting was due partly to the time required to get laboratory confirmation of infections.

    "The Chinese Government has no intention of hiding an outbreak of foot and mouth," he said.

    "It is not a major threat to public health," he said. "So what we need to do with all our energy and resources is to put the disease under timely control."

    The disease usually isn't fatal, but herds are often slaughtered to prevent its spread. It affects cloven-footed animals such as cattle, sheep and pigs, causing blisters on the feet and mouth.

    Meanwhile, avian flu killed more than 1,000 migratory birds in Qinghai Province in an outbreak, Jia said Friday, but he said there were no reports of human cases.

    More than 1,000 bar-headed geese, great black-headed gulls and other birds found this month in Qinghai died of the H5N1 strain of bird flu, said Jia.

    "It is a rarity for such large-scale deaths to occur, whether in China or other parts of the world. We have never heard of such a thing," Jia said at a news conference.

    Nevertheless, he said, "No person in Qinghai has been infected by the virus."

    The region-wide death toll in Asia's latest bird flu outbreak stands at 54, but no fatalities have been reported in China. Vietnam is hardest-hit, with 38 deaths.

    The deaths prompted the government to order all 3 million of chickens, ducks and other poultry in Qinghai vaccinated. Nature reserves were closed to the public and farms near migration routes were told to watch for signs of disease.

    Health experts worry that avian flu could be spread by birds whose migration routes cross Asia from Siberia through China and Southeast Asia to New Zealand and India.

    The World Health Organization has warned that bird flu poses a great potential threat to humans if it evolves into a virus that can easily spread from person to person. 

    (Source: Shenzhen Daily-Agencies)