South Korean authorities have announced a weeklong ban from Saturday on any movement of pigs from North Jeolla Province to other regions in efforts to contain the recent foot-and-mouth disease outbreak, which has resulted in the culling of over 10,000 pigs.

The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs said the ban would apply on all 1.2 million pigs in the area, and is effective from Saturday to midnight Jan. 23. It follows a daylong provisional quarantine of the area issued Wednesday.

The ministry added that the ban was provisional and could be extended. It is also mulling whether to apply the quarantine to the neighboring provinces of South Chungcheong and South Jeolla.

Korean law stipulates that if a livestock-related infection risks breaking out and proliferating, the agriculture minister or the head of a regional government is entitled to ban such livestock or related products from leaving the region. Those who violate the measure can face up to one year in prison or 10 million won ($8,200) in fine.

“The measure was unavoidable to prevent foot-and-mouth disease from spreading and to ensure that it is rooted out in its early stages,” said Lee Jun-won, head of the Agriculture Ministry’s food industry policy office.

The outbreak, which started Monday in Gimje and Wednesday at Gochang, has resulted in mass culling of 670 and 9,800 pigs in the two cities, respectively. It marked the first local occurrences eight months of the infectious disease, which affects cloven-hoofed animals.

The Ministry of Public Safety and Securities subsequently raised the alert level for the disease by one notch to the third-highest level.

North Jeolla Provincial government officials said they would conduct an emergency inoculation on 114,000 pigs in Gochang area, while urging all farms to report any cases of suspected infection.

Agriculture Ministry officials on Friday were investigating the source and route of infection for the outbreak. 

A genetic comparison of the virus at Gimje and Gochang showed a 99.06 percent match to the virus of an FMD outbreak in North Chungcheong Province in December 2014, and a 95.8 percent match to that in South Gyeongsang Province in July 2014.


By Yoon Min-sik
(minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com)