South Korea-Vets helped spread FMD

Vets helped spread FMD Farmers’ meetings, feed transport also blamed May 18, 2010

The outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease this year was caused by the import of the virus from neighboring countries, but the spread of disease within Korea was mainly due to veterinarians who visited infected farms, officials said yesterday. The first outbreak of FMD in Pocheon, Gyeonggi in January was likely caused by a foreign worker from a Northeast Asian country, believed to be either China or Mongolia, who entered Korea last October, according to the National Veterinary Research and Quarantine Service, which conducted an investigation. The immigrant worker was hired by a local farm and received an package containing clothes and shoes, believed to be contaminated with the FMD virus, sent from his homeland in November. “The foot-and-mouth disease outbreak based on virus type A took place widely in Northeast Asia in 2009, and our genetic analysis discovered the January outbreak in Pocheon is 97.64 percent identical with the outbreak in other Northeast Asian areas,” the research agency said in a statement. The virus made its way to five other farms as a local vet who treated animals in the first affected farm visited others. In addition, the virus could have been spread by local farmers holding emergency meetings to discuss the outbreak. After slaughtering nearly 6,000 animals at 55 farms in the Pocheon area, which caused a loss of 42.5 billion won ($36.8 million), the government officially declared the outbreak over in March. A month later, another outbreak occurred in the Gangwha Island area. This outbreak was likely caused by a local farmer returning from a trip, believed to be to China. His livestock farm was the initial site of this outbreak. “The owner of the farm with the initial case traveled to the country from March 8 to 13, returned home and entered the farm with no sanitization procedure, and the country to which the farm owner traveled experienced many outbreaks during those days,” the agency said. The agency’s gene analysis revealed the virus that caused the second outbreak was 99.06 percent identical with the one that caused the recent outbreaks in China. The agency also said the virus is suspected of moving not only to the neighboring city of Gimpo but also the interior areas of Chungju and Cheongyang, North Chungcheong Province, through the transport of animal feed, insemination technicians and local farmers’ meetings. “The foot-and-mouth disease based on the blood type O is spreading in countries like China, Japan, Mongolia and Korea,” said Kim Bong-hwan, the head of the investigative team. “We need to keep sanitizing and quarantining” all related facilities.