hankyoreh

South Korea on Sunday began the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of poultry at six farms in the southwestern part of the country a day after test results confirmed the outbreak of the highly virulent type of bird flu, agriculture officials said.

Agriculture Minister Park Hong-soo held an emergency breakfast meeting with senior ministry officials to discuss countermeasures to prevent the spread of the avian influenza virus, they said.

In accordance with the manual approved by the National Security Council, the government began culling 236,000 chickens and ducks at six farms within a 500-meter radius of the initially-infected farm in Iksan, about 250 kilometers south of Seoul. The quarantine will also include slaughtering 300 pigs and 577 dogs within the area.

Authorities also expanded the boundary of the quarantine defense to a 10-kilometer radius of the outbreak site, and they are planning to give orders to conduct extra culling based on test results on livestock with a 3-kilometer radius.

On Saturday, the agriculture ministry announced test results confirming the outbreak was caused by a "highly pathogenic" form of the H5N1 virus. Last week, the outbreak caused the deaths of some 6,500 chickens at the farm.

Kim Dal-joong, an assistant agriculture minister, was dispatched to the scene to spearhead efforts to quarantine the area and keep the spread of bird flu at bay, the officials said.

Authorities have banned the movement of all chickens, birds and eggs within a 10-kilometer radius of the outbreak site. At present no one has shown symptoms of having contracted the flu, the ministry said.

The ministry also plans to step up a publicity campaign to raise public awareness that bird flu does not affect humans if poultry is cooked well enough.

To that end, Prime Minister Han Myeong-sook will visit the ministry headquarters in Gwacheon, south of Seoul, and have chicken soup with agriculture officials at a nearby restaurant, according to the officials.

According to Halim Co., a local chicken processor, the outbreak of the highly pathogenic bird flu is expected to cost the Iksan-based company up to 15 billion won (US$16 million).

Almost 7 billion won was lost by culling 340,000 chickens and closing two hatcheries. Lost sales of up to 30 percent next month would cost another 7.5 billion won, the company said Sunday.

In 2003 and 2004, South Korea destroyed 5.3 million poultry at a cost of about 1.5 billion won to prevent the spread of the disease. No South Korean citizen has ever fallen ill from bird flu.

A highly pathogenic strain of the H5N1 bird flu virus has been cited by the World Health Organization for killing at least 148 people in 10 countries since late 2003. Of the 43 countries to have reported bird flu outbreaks, 28 have not yet fully contained it.

Seoul, Nov. 26 (Yonhap News)