The Ministry of Agriculture published a press release Monday, saying that China paid great importance to the prevention and control of bird flu.

Since the beginning of this year after the outbreak of bird flu in the country, the ministry had launched a large-scale monitoring project across the country, carried out pathogenic and serological check on over 1.1 million samples of poultry and some samples of pigs. The result showed that there was no pig infected by bird flu virus.

The officials said that the ministry had reported the results to international organizations, like Food and Agricultural Organization and World Health Organizations.

The release said that an expert mentioned China's finding of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu in pigs in 2003 and had published the research results openly at the beginning of this year. Relative international research shows that bird flu virus could not only infect poultry, but also mammal animals.

(Xinhua News Agency August 23, 2004)