SOUTH KOREA: South Korea finds second case of bird flu

South Korea said on Tuesday (November 28) it had found a second case of highly pathogenic bird flu at a poultry farm, after confirming over the weekend it had its first outbreak in three years of the H5N1 strain. Agriculture ministry officials are working to confirm if the second outbreak was the H5N1 strain, which can be deadly to humans. The ministry said the latest case has killed about 200 chickens at a farm, 3 km (1.864 miles) from where the first outbreak of the H5N1 strain was found at a poultry farm in North Cholla province. The farms in the southwest of the country lie on a path for migratory birds that are heading south from places such as Russia, Mongolia and Kazakhstan. Kim Chang-sub, from the Quarantine Department at the Agriculture Ministry said trucks transporting feed for poultry might be an infection route. "We are investigating farm houses which took feed for poultry from the rice mill. The feed for poultry itself is not the problem, but the trucks from those farm houses could have been parking together or passing by each other at the rice mill," he said. The second confirmed outbreak has sparked concern that other parts of South Korea may have also been hit. South Korea had planned to cull 236,000 poultry by Thursday (November 30) within a 500-metre (1,640-ft) radius of the farm in North Cholla province about 170 km (100 miles) south from Seoul. It had by Monday (November 27) completed culling 75,500 poultry in the same area. During the first outbreak between December 2003 and March 2004, the country culled 5.3 million birds and spent about 1.5 trillion won ($1.6 billion) to prevent the disease spreading, officials said. Subsequent testing in the United States indicated at least nine South Korean workers involved in the cull had been infected with the H5N1 virus, but none developed major illnesses.

ITN Source | November 28, 2006

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