South Korea culls 1.3 million livestock
South Korea has ordered the culling of 1.34 million livestock since late November to stem its severest foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) outbreak in history, the government has announced.
The Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said quarantine officials ordered the culling of 107,500 heads of cattle, just under 1.23 million pigs and over 3,700 goats and deer on 3,300 farms in the past 40 days.
The government started vaccinating animals on 25 December 2010, with 2.15 million livestock in six provinces and two major cities getting shots. All cattle and breeding sows in the central Gyeonggi, Chungcheong and Gangwon provinces as well as those in the city of Incheon, west of Seoul, are being vaccinated.
There are claims that losses will require the use of the government’s emergency budget since existing reserves and farm-related public funds accumulated in the past are insufficient to deal with the extent of the damage.
Before the first FMD case was confirmed on 29 Novemer 2010, the country had 3.4 million heads of cattle, 9.4 million pigs and a considerable number of other livestock.
The total number of confirmed cases of FMD is now 112. The latest cases involved two cattle ranches and a pig farm in North Gyeongsang Province in the country’s southeastern region, along with a small cattle farm in Chuncheon, 85 kilometres east of Seoul. All 1,600 animals on the farms and those within a 500-metre radius have been ordered culled.
FMD is highly contagious and affects all cloven-hoofed animals, such as cattle, pigs, deer, goats and buffalo. It is classified as a ‘List A’ disease by the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health although it is harmless to humans.
South Korea was hit by the disease in 2000, 2002 and two more times in early 2010. Before the latest set of outbreaks, Seoul had used vaccines only once, in 2000.
