South Korea to expand mass cull to curb bird flu

South Korea is to cull hundreds of thousands more chickens after its first bird flu outbreak for three years spread to a second poultry farm, officials said.

Quarantine officials had originally begun culling poultry within 500 meters of the two infection sites on the outskirts of Iksan city, 230 kilometers (140 miles) south of Seoul.

But the agriculture ministry decided at an emergency meeting Thursday to slaughter all poultry within three kilometers after the potentially deadly H5N1 virus was detected Tuesday at a second farm.

The farm at Hwangdeung was three kilometers from the farm at Seokmae where the first outbreak occurred last week.

"We have decided to kill all poultry in the three-kilometer quarantine zone," ministry spokesman Pyo Se-Ung told AFP. The area covers 40 farms and 764,000 birds including those already culled, he said.

He said the ministry would set up more checkpoints manned by quarantine authorities and police to control vehicle and people movements.

Ministry officials accepted a experts' report that the virus seemed to have been transmitted by vehicles carrying wheat chaff between the two farms before quarantine measures went into force, the spokesman said.

Iksan officials said some 300,000 chickens, half of them newly hatched, had been culled as of Wednesday as well as 434 pigs and four dogs.

"The pace of culling is slower than expected due to a manpower shortage," a ministry official told AFP.

Yonhap news agency said Iksan authorities are severely short of people for the cull due to fears of possible contamination.

China and Japan have banned imports of poultry products from South Korea following the outbreak.

News of the disease, along with graphic photos of masked men in white coveralls handling the cull, has sent chicken consumption and prices plummeting across South Korea.

Consumption has fallen up to 40 percent and the chicken price per kilogram has fallen from an average 1,100 won (1.18 US dollars) to 700 won, according to the Korea Chicken Council.

The government has launched a poultry consumption campaign, with cafeterias at government office buildings serving "samgyetang" (chicken broth) with ginseng and glutinous rice.

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.

H5N1, which is spread through contact with sick animals, has killed more than 150 people worldwide since late 2003 and triggered mass culls of tens of millions of poultry.

Commentary

H5N1 Confirmed On Second South Korean Farm
Recombinomics Commentary
November 28 2006

Bird flu killed about 200 chickens at a South Korean farm, the second outbreak of the H5N1 avian influenza strain in three days, fueling concerns that the virus may be spreading in the country again after three years.

The farm, in the southwestern city of Iksan, housed about 12,000 fowl about 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) from a farm where an H5N1 outbreak was confirmed Nov. 25, Kim Yang Il, a spokesman at South Korea's agriculture ministry, said over the phone today.

The infections are the first in South Korea, Asia's second- biggest corn importer, since an initial H5N1 outbreak in December 2003.

The above comments confirm a second outbreak of HPAI H5N1 in South Korea. The case is outside the 500 meter cull zone, so a new perimeter is being established for the second farm. However, the location of these farms in a migratory bird flyway raises additional concerns that the infections are linked to wild birds. Larger numbers of chicken deaths have been reported in three or four locations other than the two confirmed farms, although media reports indicate those infections are not H5N1. The media in Korea has adopted a new definition of avian influenza, which excludes all serotypes other than H5N1, so media reports that birds are avian influenza negative may be false.

The H5N1 positive farms mimic the outbreak in December of 2003 that was followed by H5N1 infections in early 2004 in Japan as well as countries throughout eastern Asia, including human fatalities in Vietnam and Thailand.

Although it is three years later, the H5N1 surveillance worldwide has moved beyond scandalous. The current outbreak in South Korea came without warning. South Korea has never reported H5N1 in wild birds, even though the Qinghai strain has significant regions of identity with H5N1 from South Korea/Japan 2003/2004 isolates. Similarly, Japan detected H5N1 in local wild birds in association with the 2004 outbreak on farms, but has not reported H5N1 in any migratory birds or detection of any Qinghai isolates.

Similarly, the number of public Qinghai isolates from eastern Asia remains at one. The Shantou isolate was among the 404 HA sequences collected in southeastern China in 2005 and 2006.

In Europe, 700 samples positive for the Qinghai strain have been identified, but almost all samples are from dead wild birds and farm infections. Detection of H5N1 in live birds has been close to zero. The country that has detected H5N1 in live birds has been Russia, but these positives came after widespread infections were identified on farms.

In North America, testing of dead or dying wild birds has been minimal. In the United States, fewer than 1000 birds have been tested, even though 35,000 live or hunter killed birds have been tested. Although low path H5N1 has been detected and isolated in the live birds, no H5N1 has been identified in the small number of tested dead or dying birds. The failure to detect low path H5N1 in these birds defines a fatally flawed surveillance system, which actively ignores the large wild bird die-offs, frequently in areas where H5N1 has been detected in live birds.

http://www.recombinomics.com/News/11280601/H5N1_Korea_Confirmed_2.html

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