A new foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) outbreak has been reported at a pig farm in Gangwon Province, the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said Thursday.
The ministry issued an order to cull and bury about 13,000 animals at the farm in Hongcheon, about 100 kilometers east of Seoul, and livestock within a 500-meter radius of the farm have also been ordered slaughtered.
This is the first time that a pig farm has tested positive for the deadly disease in the eastern province. With the latest outbreak, the number of cattle and pig farms infected has risen to 12.
In the meantime, President Lee Myung-bak called on the military to be more involved in assisting government efforts to contain the rapid spread of the disease across the nation.
The government has ordered the culling of over 549,000 and the vaccination of 227,000 animals at 8,570 farms across the country.