Bird flu scare returns, SKorea culls 96,000 chickens

SEOUL: South Korean workers were on Monday slaughtering tens of thousands of chickens to control an outbreak of deadly bird flu around a southern city, amid a media report of a new outbreak elsewhere.

The agriculture ministry has already culled 81,000 poultry and other animals since a highly contagious strain of the H5N1 virus was detected Saturday near the southern city of Iksan.

"Today we are culling 96,000 chickens within a 500-metre radius of the outbreak site," ministry spokesman Park Tae-Hwan told the media.

By Thursday the ministry plans to complete the culling of about 236,000 chickens and ducks, he said, adding the slaughter will include 300 pigs and 577 dogs.

"The virus has not been detected at farms outside the designated area but we are desperate to control the outbreak by maintaining tight restrictions on the  movement of people and vehicles within a 10-kilometre quarantine zone," he said.

Health officials have confirmed that the outbreak -- the country's first for three years -- was caused by the H5N1 strain which can also be deadly for humans.

Excavators were brought in to dig burial sites for the birds, as workers in white protective suits and face masks continued the cull.

Yonhap news agency said bird flu has also been found in a pair of chickens raised in the city of Seosan, north of Iksan.

It quoted unidentified provincial officials as saying the chickens were born from eggs supplied by the Iksan poultry farm where the outbreak was discovered last week. The agriculture ministry said it was checking the report.

Poultry consumption has plunged by around 20 per cent since the outbreak was confirmed Saturday to be bird flu, newspapers said. Samsung Tesco reported a 30 percent drop in chicken sales, Dong-A newspaper reported.

The government began a campaign to persuade people that bird flu is not a threat if poultry is well cooked. Prime Minister Han Myeong-Sook and agriculture officials dined Sunday on chicken soup in an attempt to restore confidence.

Iksan is a hub of the poultry industry and includes top chicken meat processor Halim. The firm supplies up to 25 percent of domestic demand and also exports cooked chicken to Japan and other countries.

Japan has now suspended South Korean poultry imports.

South Korea was the first country to report avian flu when the latest outbreaks, the largest and most severe on record, began in Asia in mid-2003.

From December 2003 to March 2004, it destroyed 5.3 million ducks and chickens at a cost of 150 billion won (now 160 million dollars) and in December last year declared itself free of the virus.

No South Koreans have fallen ill from bird flu. Earlier this year a total of nine people were found to have been infected by the H5N1 virus but they had shown no symptoms. 

North Korea announced new measures on Monday to prevent the virus from spreading across the heavily fortified border.

Frontier surveillance posts are working closely with veterinary pathologists to try to stop the disease being brought into the communist state, the official Korean Central News Agency reported.

Hundreds of South Koreans cross the border daily for sightseeing trips or business.

H5N1, which is spread through contact with sick animals, has killed more than 150 people worldwide since late 2003 and triggered mass culls of tens of millions of poultry.