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(2nd LD) S. Korea confirms new outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease
SEOUL, April 28 (Yonhap) -- The government on Wednesday confirmed the nation's ninth outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease this month at a pig farm west of Seoul.
The animals at the farm on Ganghwa Island, 60 kilometers from the capital city started showing symptoms late Tuesday, prompting on-site quarantine officials to order the culling and burying of all pigs raised there as a preventative step, the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said.
The ministry, which effectively raised the country's disease alert status to its highest level last week, is discouraging the movement of people, vehicles and animals near the site of the latest outbreak, hoping to help contain the disease. The farm, which raises 1,000 pigs, is located 3.1 kilometers from where the first outbreak was reported on April 8.
Farmers there recently noticed foot-and mouth symptoms -- blisters on the nose, mouth, teats and legs -- on some of the animals.
"Exactly how the animals became infected has not been determined, but a person responsible for artificial insemination, who visited a farm that reported an outbreak earlier in the month, may have spread the disease," an official said. While the normal incubation period for the animal virus is about two weeks, it can develop inside an animal for up to three weeks before symptoms start to show in rare cases, he added.
The outbreak is the first to be confirmed in the country since the two cases of the animal disease reported Thursday at another part of Ganghwa and in Chungju, located in the central part of the country.
Foot-and-mouth disease affects all cloven-hoofed animals such as cattle, pigs, deer, goats and buffalo and is classified as a "List A" disease by the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health. Countries that report the disease are barred from exporting meat from cloven hoofed animals.
The farm is located in a relatively isolated part of the island with no livestock within a 500 meter radius, so no additional animals have to be culled, the ministry said. It, however, said an area up to 10 kilometers from the farm will be designated a special monitoring region so quarantine officials can check animals and take immediate action if a suspected case is found.
The government has ordered the culling of more than 42,000 heads of livestock on Ganghwa and in nearby Gimpo so far, with the total for the entire year exceeding 49,000 animals counting the latest outbreak. As of last week, compensation paid by the government to farmers reached 64.0 billion won (US$57.1 million).
The ministry said that in the future quarantine officials will be given the authority to order the culling of animals that may have been infected or order close observation regardless of distance from an outbreak site.
The country reported six outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease in the Pocheon and Yeoncheon regions north of Seoul in January.
In the two previous outbreaks that hit the country in 2000 and 2002 the government ordered the culling of 2,216 and 5,956 animals at a cost of 300.6 billion won and 143.4 billion won, respectively. The higher compensation was due to a nationwide vaccination carried out to control the 2000 outbreak.
The ministry, meanwhile, said the latest outbreaks must be viewed separately from the outbreaks in January, noting the wide time gap and the fact that the latest cases involve a different strain of the virus.
All outbreaks confirmed in the first month of the year were of the A-Type strain, while those reported this month are O-Type, which spreads more quickly through swine.
yonngong@yna.co.kr
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