China: Shanghai to Build Animal Disease Prevention Centre

Text of report in English by official Chinese news agency Xinhua (New China News Agency)

Shanghai, 4 November: Shanghai is planning to build an advanced animal disease prevention and control centre, equipped with a bio- safety level three laboratory (P3 Lab), to strengthen the tracking and research of the sources of animal diseases and to enhance its warning capacity.

Zhang Suhua, deputy director of the municipal agriculture commission’s animal husbandry office, said here Friday [4 November] that according to the preliminary plan, the centre will be built in the Fengxian District, covering over 8,000 square meters.

The official said that at least 100m yuan (about 12.3bn US dollars) will be invested in building the centre and it is scheduled to be put into operation in 2007.

Experts say that the P3 Lab in the centre will serve as an important base to study and cope with the serious animal diseases.

In this advanced lab, the scientific researchers will be able to supervise the mutation of diseases and study the sources of serious diseases so that they will find out the disease source distribution and the spread regulation, said Zhang.

The establishment of the centre will remarkably improve Shanghai’s early-warning capacity against animal diseases, which is quite significant to prevent and control some disastrous diseases like bird flu, said the official.