SEOUL, South Korea – South Korea stepped up the culling of poultry and enforced strict quarantine measures Saturday to stop the country’s first outbreak of bird flu in 3 years from spreading, officials said.
Some 21,000 ducks on a poultry farm in Gochang in North Jeolla Province – 300 kilometres (187 miles) southwest of Seoul – were culled after avian influenza was found there, the agriculture ministry said.
“Testing showed it was confirmed as H5N1 avian flu,” Kwong Jae-Hwan, a senior ministry official, told reporters on Saturday, January 18.
Ducks were found on Friday, January 17, to have been infected with a highly pathogenic form of avian influenza and a tight sanitary cordon has been established around the farm.
The culling of 60,000 ducks at nearby farms has also begun and a probe into the deaths of about 1,000 migratory birds in a reservoir in Gochang has been opened, the ministry added.
Quarantine measures were also enforced at 24 other farms in 4 different provinces that were known to have purchased ducks from the Gochang farm.
The last outbreak in South Korea occurred in 2011, when more than 6 million poultry were culled at more than 280 farms across the country. –Rappler.com
There are no comments yet. Add your comment to start the conversation.