Japan to Triple Cattle, Hog Cull on Foot-and-Mouth (Update1

May 19 (Bloomberg) -- Japan will almost triple the number of animals to be culled in Miyazaki prefecture, a major farming region, as an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease threatens the nation’s livestock industry.

All pigs, beef cattle and dairy cows in areas where most cases of the disease were discovered will be culled, raising the figure by about 205,000, from 118,160 animals as of yesterday, Agriculture Minister Hirotaka Akamatsu told reporters in Tokyo today. The government will vaccinate them before slaughter to slow the spread of the virus, he said.

Foot-and-mouth is one of the most contagious livestock diseases and can have high mortality rates in young animals, according to the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health, or OIE. Miyazaki is Japan’s second-largest pig-farming region and third-largest producer of beef cattle.

“Supply of domestic meat may become tight,” Susumu Harada, senior director at the U.S. Meat Export Federation, said today by phone. Exporters of pork and beef to Japan “may benefit if the disease continues to spread.”

Japan’s imports of pork and beef have not been affected so far as the nation has large stockpiles from last year, when the economic slump cut consumption, Harada said. Japan is the largest importer of U.S. pork, and was the biggest buyer of U.S. beef before it cut imports when mad-cow disease was discovered there in 2003.

High Risk

Of the 205,000 additional animals to be culled, 155,000 are pigs, Akamatsu said. They are at high risk of being infected as they live within a radius of 10 kilometers of the affected farms, he said. Previously the government only killed animals on farms where suspected cases of the disease were discovered.

The government will also require growers in a radius of 10 kilometers to 20 kilometers of the disease-hit farms to ship their animals to local slaughter houses as soon as possible, Akamatsu said. This is aimed at decreasing the number of animals at risk of contracting the disease, he said.

The number of staff who will cull and bury animals will be increased, Akamatsu said.

“A lack of manpower may be blamed for the slow pace of culling,” he said. “We need to add more people.”

The government will pay the costs of culling and compensate farmers for lost animals, Akamatsu said, without disclosing how much will be spent.

Cabinet Team

Japan’s previous foot-and-mouth outbreak occurred in 2000, when 740 animals were killed in Miyazaki prefecture and on the northern island of Hokkaido.

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has set up a cabinet team to deal with the problem as opposition parties’ criticism of Akamatsu’s handling of the issue intensifies before the nation’s upper-house election planned for July.

Miyazaki accounted for about 9.2 percent of Japan’s total swine herd, which was estimated by the agriculture ministry at 9.9 million as of Feb. 1, 2009. The prefecture also represented 10 percent of the country’s total herd of beef cattle estimated at 2.9 million.

The foot-and-mouth virus found in Miyazaki is similar to the type discovered in South Korea, according to the ministry.

In South Korea, the farm ministry said April 22 that two cases were found at a pig farm in Chungju, south of Seoul, indicating the virus had spread inland. A new outbreak was discovered on April 9 on Ganghwa island, less than a month after the nation declared itself free of the disease.

China in March reported an outbreak of the disease in pigs.