February 12, 2007

South Korea starts culling poultry amid fresh bird flu outbreak

South Korean quarantine officials began slaughtering hundreds of thousands of poultry after a fresh outbreak of bird flu in a province near the South Korean capital, the Agriculture Ministry said Saturday (Feb 10).

The outbreak--the sixth in South Korea in recent months--was caused by the H5 strain of the virus, but further tests were needed to determine whether it has been caused by the N1 type, said Kim Chang-seob, the ministry's chief veterinary officer.

Quarantine officials will kill 240,000 poultry within a two-mile radius of the outbreak site at a chicken farm in Anseong, about 50 miles south of Seoul, Kim said.

That would bring the total number of birds culled in the six outbreaks to more than 2 million since November. All cases involved the H5N1 virus.

South Korea culled 5.3 million birds during the last known outbreak of bird flu in 2003.