South Korean confirms 11th FMD outbreak

South Korea on Friday (May 7) confirmed the 11th outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) since April at a cattle farm in the central part of the country.

The animals at the "hanwoo" meat cattle farm in Cheongyang, about 165 kilometres south of Seoul, started showing symptoms such as blisters on the nose and excessive salvation early Thursday (May 6), prompting quarantine officials to seal off the farm and limit movement of people and vehicles in the immediate vicinity, the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MFAFF) said.

Quarantine officials have started culling livestock at the farm and those within a 500 metre radius of the latest outbreak to try to contain the highly-contagious disease.

As of early this week, South Korea had culled and buried 49,131 livestock from 361 farms to prevent the spread of the animal disease, and effectively put the government on the highest animal disease alert level.