Foot-and-mouth disease spreading

A quarantine official stands at the entrance of a pig farm in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, where foot-and-mouth disease was found, Friday. / Yonhap

By Lee Kyung-min

The government is on high alert over the spread of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), which re-surfaced on a farm in Jincheon, North Chungcheong Province, on Dec. 3

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs, Friday, eight farms in Jincheon and some farms in four other cities nearby tested positive for the disease: Jeungpyeong, Cheongju, Umseong in North Chungcheong Province, and Cheonan in South Chungcheong Province.

So far, authorities in South and North Chungcheong Province have culled some 14,491 pigs since Dec. 3.

They culled 1,788 pigs from Jincheon, 5,000 from Cheongju, 129 from Umseong and 1,500 from Cheonan.

As a prevention measure, the ministry officials said they plan to vaccinate some 62,000 pigs on 41 farms near the area from Dec. 19- 22.

They secured a 100 million-won ($90,000) budget and purchased 48,000 bottles of vaccine, the ministry said.

The virus turned out to be type-O, the same sort for which the authorities have vaccines, the ministry added.

The ministry stressed the importance of sterilization to prevent further damage.

“FMD is common in winter, so the outbreak was expected, but extra caution and a thorough sterilization is crucial for individual farm owners. If anything unusual is detected, or any livestock show symptoms, such as, forming blisters on the nose, report it to the quarantine authority right away,” a ministry official said.

Containing further spread of the outbreak tops its priority given the recent cold spell, a known cause for the spread, the official added.

The disease is highly contagious among livestock, and occurs in animals such as cows, pigs and sheep. It can be transmitted through the air and all livestock with FMD have to be slaughtered, according to the ministry.

From November 2010 to April 2011, Korea suffered its worst FMD epidemic. Over 3.4 million cattle, pigs and sheep were slaughtered at 6,200 farms nationwide.

Also, in July, the nation suffered an unusual outbreak of the FMD on a pig farm in Goryeong, when some 1,500 pigs were culled after about 200 showed symptoms.

It is hard to pinpoint exactly where the virus came from, according to Park Choi-kyu, a professor at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Kyungpook National University.

In order to figure out how the FMD virus spread to Korea, further analysis is needed, according to the professor.