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 The virus, first detected in the Southeast Asian country in
February, has hit farms in 29 provinces, and prompted the
authorities to cull more than 1.2 million pigs.
"Soon, soldiers and policemen will take part in efforts to make sure
infected pigs are culled in a timely manner, keeping the outbreak
from spreading further," the state-run Tien Phong newspaper reported
on Tuesday, citing Vietnam's deputy agriculture minister, Phung Duc
Tien.
According to the report, Tien said police will launch an
investigation into cases, where local authorities have failed to
properly handle the outbreak.
"Vietnam had never faced such a dangerous, complicated and costly
disease outbreak in its husbandry industry," agriculture minister
Nguyen Xuan Cuong said at a conference in Hanoi on Monday.
Many provinces had failed to detect outbreaks and cull infected pigs
properly due to the lack of funds and space required for burying the
dead pigs, the government said on Monday.
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Pork accounts for three-quarters of the total meat consumption in
Vietnam, a country of 95 million people, where most of its 30
million farm-raised pigs are consumed domestically.
The disease, which is harmless to humans but incurable in pigs, has
also spread quickly across neighboring China, the world's top pork
producer.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in March
advised Vietnam to declare the swine fever outbreak as a national
emergency.
(Reporting by Khanh Vu, Editing by James Pearson and Sherry
Jacob-Phillips)
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