February 17, 2011

North Korea panics over livestock disease spread

A fast moving disease that has devastated South Korean livestock and damaged the country's food production now appears to be beyond control in North Korea.

It is unclear where or when the latest outbreak of the airborne, easily transported illness known as FMD began on the Korean peninsula. But in a sign of the pressure North Korea is facing over the issue, its state media on Tuesday (Feb 15) reported that the outbreak originated in the South and that other countries, including Malaysia and Mongolia, have been hit with outbreaks in the past.

North Korea, which faces chronic food shortages and whose authoritarian government resists interaction with outsiders, hasn't taken any apparent steps to cull animals infected with the disease, as South Korea did.

Visitors to North Korea reported as far back as December they suspected the country was battling FMD, but North Korea's state news agency didn't officially confirm the outbreak until Thursday (Feb 17) when it said "more than 10,000 head of draft oxen, milk cows and pigs have been infected" and "thousands of them died."

In addition to reducing the North's already-constrained food supply, the disease's spread to oxen, widely used in place of tractors there, will limit the ability of North Korean farmers to carry out planting and other tasks.

In the past, foot-and-mouth disease has plagued farm animals in other parts of Asia, Africa and South America and occasionally in Europe. Although animals can recover from it, they are weakened and unable to viably produce meat and milk. The disease poses no risk to humans.

Over the past decade, South Korea has quickly contained three outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease, and Japan contained one last year.

But the latest South Korean outbreak, fueled in part by cold weather that reduced the effectiveness of disinfectants and by Seoul authorities' slow initial response, has proved difficult to stop. The FAO's chief veterinary officer, Juan Lubroth, recently called the outbreak's magnitude "unlike anything we've seen for at least half a century."

South Korea has reported approximately 150 confirmed cases of the disease since late November. To halt its spread, authorities ordered the slaughter of animals at farms close to places where cases were confirmed. As a result, more than three million pigs, about a third of the total on South Korean farms, and 150,000 cattle, about 5% of national total, have been killed since the outbreak began. About 6,000 of South Korea's 178,000 farms have lost their livestock. South Korea's government estimates it will spend more than $2 billion helping farmers recover.

South Korea's pork and dairy production have been severely damaged and demand for corn and other feed grains has plunged. South Koreans eat pork more than any other meat and South Korean farmers produced about 70% of the nation's consumption, with imports making up the rest. But this year, South Korean farmers will be able to provide only about half the country's pork needs.