S Korea to introduce livestock permit system
South Korea will introduce a livestock permit system starting in 2012 to better regulate the agricultural sector, which has seen several outbreaks of animal diseases over the past year, the government has announced.
The livestock industry development plan also calls for placing greater responsibility on individual farmers to prevent outbreaks and penalising those failing to follow animal protection rules, the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said.
Large corporate farms should get permits by 2012 with the system to be expanded to include all small-scale farms raising cattle, pigs, chicken and ducks by 2015. Farms engaged in animal breeding and chick hatching should also get permits next year regardless of the number of animals raised.
Currently, South Korea has an estimated 8,600 corporate farms, accounting for 4.4% of the livestock growers in the country. These farms raise more than 100 heads of cows, at least 2,000 pigs, and between 10,000 to 50,000 chickens and ducks. The number of small-scale farms tops 81,000.
“To reduce the falloff of adopting the new system, the government will allow a grace period of one-year for existing livestock farmers, although all new farms must adhere to the rules from the outset,” Farm Minister Yoo Jeong-bok said.
Farmers will also be required to take full responsibility for the hiring and decontamination of foreign labourers hired to take care of animals, while unauthorised disposal of animal waste could result in immediate revoking of permits.
The farm ministry has been pushing for changes after many recent foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) and bird flu outbreaks have been blamed on farmers not doing their part to decontaminate themselves, employees and animals.
In the future, both farmers and local governments will be required to play more of a role in handling animal disease outbreaks, he said, adding local governments will be required to pay 20% of compensation paid for animals culled with the rest to come from the central government.
Besides such measures, the ministry said that while it plans to maintain the current ‘yellow’ alert level for FMD, it will immediately issue a ‘red’ alert if outbreaks involving different types of viruses are found in the country.
A red alert is the highest on the four-tiered alert systems that rises from ‘blue’ to ‘yellow’ when there is a slight threat and to ‘orange’ when an outbreak is spreading across the country.
