Bird flu thwarts South Korean duck farm
Over 21,000 breeding ducks have been culled in South Korea’s first outbreak of bird flu in three years.
The ducks on a poultry farm in Gochang in North Jeolla Province, 300 kilometres southwest of Seoul, were culled after avian influenza was found there, the agriculture ministry said.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs said in a statement that it suspects a flock of migratory birds found dead last week brought the latest outbreak of the H5N8 strain of bird flu, a strain first identified in a 2010 case reported in China and is similar to the H5N1 type.
Authorities are now enforcing strict quarantine measures to stop the outbreak from spreading. The culling of 60,000 ducks at nearby farms has begun and a probe into the deaths of the 1,000 migratory birds in a reservoir in Gochang has been opened, the ministry added. Quarantine measures have also been enforced at 24 other farms in four different provinces that were known to have purchased ducks from the Gochang farm.
The last outbreak in South Korea occurred in 2011, when more than six million poultry were culled at more than 280 farms across the country.
Join 31,000+ subscribers
Subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated about all the need-to-know content in the poultry sector, three times a week.
