South Korea confirmed a case of foot-and-mouth disease in a dairy farm, the country’s first outbreak in less than a year, the Agriculture Ministry said Monday (Feb. 6).
The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs said in a statement that the disease was found in Boeun County dairy farms about 170 kilometers southeast of Seoul. All of the 195 cows farmed on the farm were slaughtered to control the disease.
The outbreak is the fourth largest economy in Asia since November last year, which has been working to resolve a nationwide strong bird flu virus, resulting in the exclusion of nearly 33 million farm birds, and the country’s avian influenza warning level for the first time raised to the highest Level.
This is not the first confirmation of an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in Korea. According to the statement, a case was discovered in March last year in a pig farm in Nan-ch’ongqing.
The Ministry of Agriculture said that quarantine measures had been stepped up, including ban on farms within a 3 km radius of the disease.
The Ministry also indicated that the disease is unlikely to be universal, as it is one of three types of vaccination in the country.
