Re: SKorea reports outbreak of foot and mouth disease
Re: SKorea reports outbreak of foot and mouth disease
Foot-and-mouth disease spreads across S. Korea
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SEOUL, April 22 (Yonhap) -- Cases of a highly contagious animal disease are spreading across South Korea, prompting the country to take its most stringent countermeasures to date, the government said Thursday.
The Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries
said it confirmed the seventh and eighth cases of foot-and-mouth disease this month at a pig farm in the country's interior and at a small cattle and goat farm west of Seoul.<!--BodyFile0Start--> <TABLE align=center><TBODY><TR><TD noWrap align=middle>
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Foot-and-mouth disease affects all cloven-hoofed animals such as cattle, pigs, deer and goats, and is classified as a "List A" disease by the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health.
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The country's crisis alert status will be maintained at the current orange level, the second-highest of four stages, but all countermeasures will be on par with the most serious 'red' alert level," said Ha Young-je, vice farm minister. This is effectively the highest-level response taken by Seoul for any type of animal disease outbreak, he added.
South Korea previously reported cases of foot-and-mouth in 2000 and 2002, and in the first month of this year.
Ha said Agriculture Minister Chang Tae-pyong will personally head a government team to respond to the outbreak, and that all regional administrations at the county and ward level will set up special quarantine task forces.
"Heads of regional task forces are to be headed by governors, mayors and county chiefs who will report directly to the farm minister," he said.
The vice minister said that at current level, the government is not considering vaccinating animals, which it did in 2000, because that could make it difficult for the country to regain its foot-and-mouth disease "clear" status. Getting the all-clear is required under international regulations for a country to export meat from cloven-hoofed animals.
Some 10 pigs out of 1,000 animals at the farm in Chungju, about 150 kilometers from Seoul, started showing symptoms of foot-and-mouth disease late Wednesday.
The Chungju outbreak marks the first time this year that the disease has been reported in the South Korean central province of North Chungcheong and is a sign that the virus has spread beyond the Gyeonggi region in the country's northwest.
All previous cases reported this month occurred on Ganghwa Island, 60km west of Seoul,
and one in Gimpo on the outskirts of the capital city.
The Ganghwa cattle and goat farm raises 25 animals, and veterinarians who visited the site said they observed profuse salivation and nose scabs among many of them. The farm is located 6.5km south of where the first outbreak was confirmed on April 9.
Ha stressed that officials are trying to determine the extent of the contamination at the Chungju pig farm, since the region is an import hub.
Other working-level officials said that the two recent outbreaks could be connected because both have business ties with livestock companies in Icheon and Cheongwon that sell mother pigs and animal sperm.
Foot-and-mouth disease virus can survive on clothes and shoes for up to 60 days if conditions are favorable, but the incubation period once it gets inside animals is about two weeks.
"There is a high probability that humans may have contributed to the spread of the outbreak, although further analysis is needed," a government veterinarian said. He added that officials are currently screening all farms that have business dealings with the two livestock companies and beefing up decontamination at these locations.
"Luckily tests on the pigs only picked up virus antigens and not antibodies, indicating that they have been exposed for only a few days and may not have spread the disease," the expert said, warning however that warm weather may be helping the spread of the animal virus.
At present there has been no fallout in meat prices in the country because the number of animals destroyed is relatively small. There are currently over 9.6 million pigs being raised in the country.
Frontline quarantine officials in cooperation with police and the military have started culling more than 12,700 animals on the two farms and about 100 other farms in the immediate vicinity to prevent further outbreaks of the disease and set up roadblocks farther out to control the movement of livestock at nearby farms and decontaminate vehicles.
Officials will also set a 3km "danger zone" around the Chunju farm, beyond the standard 500 meters, and all livestock within the zone will be destroyed as a preventative step. Pigs are known to spread the foot-and-mouth virus faster than cattle.
A third suspected case on Ganghwa checked by government officials tested negative for the foot-and-mouth virus.
The Prime Minister's Office, meanwhile, issued a statement calling on farmers and ordinary people to cooperate with quarantine restrictions imposed so as to speed up the eradication of the animal disease.
It urged livestock farmers to redoubled their monitoring and decontamination effort pledging compensation based on market prices and emergency relief funds.
The office asked farmers not to visit countries that have reported foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks this year such as China, Vietnam and Japan.
"Half of compensation money will be given out as quickly as possible, while farmers wanting to buy new animals to replace losses can receive very low interest loans with a grace period of two years for all purchases," it said.
The government said it has ordered the culling of 48,749 animals for the whole of this year, larger than the number of livestock that were destroyed in the two previous outbreaks. In the 2000 outbreak, 2,216 animals were destroyed, and in the outbreak two years later 5,956 livestock were culled.
A continued spread of the disease across the country threatens the local livestock industry and could put a heavy strain on state coffers as the government would be forced to compensate farmers for culled animals. The government said it has so far spent 64.0 billion won (US$57.6 million) in compensation, with the total likely to rise in the coming days.
Quarantine experts, however, said that the outbreaks reported this month must be viewed separately from the six cases confirmed in January, since there is too wide a time gap and no physical connection. All previous outbreaks took place in the Pocheon and Yeoncheon regions north of Seoul and were of the A-Type strain of the virus,
while those that have been reported this month are O-Type, which spreads more quickly through swine.:tiphat:
http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/business/2010/04/22/13/0501000000AEN20100422010100320F.HTML
