May 18, 2010, 6:11 AM EDT
May 18 (Bloomberg) -- Japan ordered more than 1 percent of its swine herd to be slaughtered after Miyazaki prefecture, the nation’s second-biggest growing region, declared a “state of emergency” as an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease spreads.
A total of 105,519 pigs and 8,612 beef cattle and dairy cows will be killed in the prefecture on the southern island of Kyushu, said Takehisa Yamamoto, an official at the animal health division of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. That’s a 42 percent increase in the past four days.
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. The cull is more than 100 times larger than during Japan’s last outbreak in 2000. Miyazaki Governor Hideo Higashikokubaru declared an emergency today as they have failed to stop the disease from spreading.
“We would like to ask residents living in the affected areas to stay home” unless they have urgent reasons to go out, Higashikokubaru was quoted by spokesman Tomofumi Yagoshi as telling reporters today. The request is aimed at containment as the possibility the disease may spread “across Kyushu island, or nationwide,” cannot be ruled out, he said.
Affected Communities
Suspected cases of foot-and-mouth were found yesterday in cows in Shintomi town, raising the number of affected communities in the prefecture to five from four, Yamamoto at the agriculture ministry said. Shintomi is located about 10 kilometers south of Kawaminami town, where most cases of the disease were discovered.
Japan’s previous foot-and-mouth outbreak occurred in 2000, when 740 animals were killed in Miyazaki and on the northern island of Hokkaido.
“It is difficult to determine how the disease is being transmitted,” Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama told reporters today. “The most important thing is that the government will take all possible measures to prevent the disease from spreading further.”...
The Agricultural Ministry’s Animal Diseases Experts committee recommended today that the government vaccinate animals against the disease to prevent it spreading further.
Japan has enough reserves of the vaccine to inoculate 700,000 animals, Nobuyuki Terakado, deputy chairman of the committee, said at a briefing today.
The government may spend as much as 20 billion yen ($216 million) on measures to prevent the spread of the disease and to help affected farmers rebuild their businesses, the Nikkei newspaper reported today, citing an unidentified person in the Ministry of Finance.
To contain the disease, Japan has restricted animal movements and is killing all stock at farms with suspected cases and disinfecting the properties. The first case was reported on April 20.
Miyazaki is Japan’s second-largest pig-farming region, accounting for about 9.2 percent of the nation’s herd, which was estimated by the agriculture ministry at 9.9 million as of Feb. 1, 2009. The prefecture is also the third-biggest beef cattle grower, accounting for 10 percent of the country’s total herd of 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.
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