South Korea to kill cats and dogs over bird flu fears

South Korea plans to kill cats and dogs to try to prevent the spread of bird flu after an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 virus at a chicken farm last week, officials said today.

Animal health experts, however, suggested it was "a bit of an extreme measure" when there was no definitive scientific evidence to suggest that cats or dogs could pass the virus to humans.

Quarantine officials have already killed 125,000 chickens within a 1,650-foot radius of the outbreak site in Iksan, about 155 miles south of Seoul, the Agriculture Ministry said.

Officials began slaughtering poultry yesterday, a day after they confirmed that the outbreak was caused by the H5N1 strain.

They plan to slaughter a total of 236,000 poultry, as well as an unspecified number of other animals, including pigs, and all dogs and cats in the area by Thursday, the ministry said. About six million eggs also will be destroyed, it said.

Slaughtering cats and dogs near an area infected with bird flu would be highly unusual in Asia.

Indonesia has killed pigs in the past, but most countries concentrate solely on destroying poultry. However, it would not be the first time for South Korea to kill cats and dogs due bird flu concerns. An official at the Agriculture Ministry said South Korea had slaughtered cats and dogs along with 5.3 million birds during the last known outbreak of bird flu in 2003.

Another ministry official, Kim Chang-sup, insisted killing cats and dogs to curtail the spread of bird flu was not an unusual practice.

"Other countries do it. They just don't talk about it," Kim said, adding that all mammals are potentially subject to the virus and that South Korea is just trying to take all possible precautionary measures.

"It's highly unusual, and it's not a science-based decision," said Peter Roeder, a Rome-based animal health expert with the UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation or FAO, who published research about cats and bird flu earlier this year in the journal Nature. "We've got absolutely no reason to believe they're important," he said.

Dr Jeff Gilbert, an animal health expert at the FAO in Vietnam, described South Korea's plan as "a bit of an extreme measure".

He said dogs and cats have been known to occasionally become infected, but they pose little risk to humans and that in most cases, the animal has contracted the virus through eating infected poultry.

Tigers and snow leopards in a Thailand zoo died in 2003 and 2004 after being fed infected chicken carcasses. Earlier this year, a few domestic cats tested positive for the virus in Europe.

The H5N1 virus began ravaging Asian poultry stocks in late 2003 and has killed at least 153 people worldwide.

So far, the disease remains hard for people to catch, and most human cases have been traced to contact with infected birds. But experts fear it will mutate into a form that is easily spread among people, possibly creating a pandemic that could kill millions.

South Korea has also been hit by a low-grade strain of bird flu that is not harmful to humans. North Korea, meanwhile, has stepped up prevention measures, by inoculating poultry and closely monitoring migratory birds, the country's official Korean Central News Agency reported Monday.

Bird flu hit North Korea early last year, prompting the slaughter of about 210,000 chickens and other poultry. No new cases of bird flu have since been reported.

Second Bird Flu Outbreak Also of Virulent Strain
Updated Nov.29,2006 10:15 KST

Authorities have confirmed that another bird flu outbreak in Iksan reported on Monday is of a virulent strain.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry said Tuesday some 200 of 12,000 chickens found dead on Sunday and Monday at a farm 3.5 km away from the initially infected area were killed by a highly virulent strain. Tests by the National Veterinary Research and Quarantine Service confirmed that the additional case is of highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza. The ministry has decided to cull all chickens and ducks raised in a 500-m radius from the newly affected farm. It will decide in a meeting on Wednesday whether to cull all poultry in a 3-km radius of the first and second infected farms.

Chang-seob, the chief veterinary officer at the ministry, said the bird flu virus was presumed to have been spread by vehicles using the 23rd Road, the preferred route of farmers in the region. The road links the first and second infected farms. The fresh outbreak gives rise to concerns that the virulent strain may spread further afield. Kim said that so far it cannot be said that avian influenza is spreading since the second case was reported within a 10-km radius of the first. Inspectors are testing other farms for the virus, he added.

http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200611/200611290018.html

China Bans Poultry From South Korea to Deter Bird Flu (Update2)

By Dune Lawrence

Nov. 29 (Bloomberg) -- China banned the import of poultry from South Korea in six provinces to prevent an outbreak of bird flu from spreading across its borders.

Agriculture and quarantine officials were ordered to increase scrutiny of cross-border cargo in Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Jiangsu, Shandong and Zhejiang provinces, the Ministry of Agriculture said in a statement posted on its Web site.

South Korea has reported two outbreaks of avian influenza since Nov. 25, the first in three years, fueling concern that the virus may spread through North Asia after renewed outbreaks in Southeast Asia last summer.

Government departments should ``step up preventive measures against the H5N1 avian influenza virus, including stopping imports of poultry products,'' China's agriculture ministry said in imposing the poultry ban on provinces closest to South Korea.

Disease trackers are monitoring the H5N1 bird-flu strain, which threatens to mutate into a form that's easily spread among humans. It has infected at least 258 people in 10 countries during the past three years, killing 153 of them, the World Health Organization said Nov. 13. No human H5N1 cases have been reported in South Korea, according to the Geneva-based WHO.

Bird flu yesterday killed about 200 chickens at a farm in South Korea's southwestern city of Iksan, about 3 kilometers from a farm where an H5N1 outbreak was confirmed on Nov. 25, according to Kim Yang Ii, a South Korean agriculture ministry spokesman.

China Outbreaks

The infections are the first in South Korea since an initial H5N1 outbreak in December 2003. That outbreak prompted the slaughter within four months of about 5.3 million poultry, worth 150 billion won ($161 million).

China has had 10 bird-flu outbreaks in poultry this year in seven provinces, with 47,000 fowl dying from the disease and 2.94 million birds culled, China's Chief Veterinary Officer Jia Youling said Nov. 11.

Samples from wild birds in Liaoning, as well as Qinghai and Tibet, have tested positive for the virus. Liaoning reported at least four outbreaks of avian flu a year ago.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said in August that a variant of the H5N1 strain found in southern China caused fresh outbreaks in poultry in Thailand and Laos in July, suggesting the virus was re-introduced through trade.

China has rejected blame for new outbreaks in Southeast Asia.

To contact the reporter on this story: Dune Lawrence in Beijing at dlawrence6@bloomberg.net

S Korean soldiers guard bird flu zones amid cull

by Park Chan-Kyong Fri Dec 1, 4:41 AM ET

SEOUL (AFP) - South Korean soldiers have guarded quarantine zones around two poultry farms hit by bird flu, as officials started slaughtering hundreds of thousands of birds in an expanded cull.

A total of 236 soldiers wearing protective suits and goggles were deployed at 17 checkpoints near the farms on the outskirts of the southern city of Iksan, the first time the military has been called in to help in the crisis.
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"All the solders have had vaccine injections and swallowed Tamiflu," it said, referring to an oral anti-viral drug used for treating influenza.
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South Korea was the first country to report avian flu when the latest outbreaks, the largest and most severe on record, began in Asia in mid-2003.

From December 2003 to March 2004, 5.3 million ducks and chickens were destroyed at a cost of 150 billion won (now 160 million US dollars). In December last year the nation had declared itself free of the virus.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061201/hl_afp/healthfluskorea

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