- SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea
said Monday it had confirmed a case of a highly contagious type of bird
flu, which can be deadly to humans, at a chicken farm near Seoul.
-
- "We have confirmed highly contagious avian influenza,
known as H5N1, in chickens," an Agriculture Ministry official told
Reuters.
-
- Since early December about 21,000 chickens have died
at the farm, which is about 80 km (50 miles) southeast of Seoul. As a precaution,
the official said, authorities had now destroyed all the remaining 5,000
chickens there.
-
- In rare instances strains of highly pathogenic avian
influenza can be lethal to humans, as well as devastating for poultry.
The H5N1 strain killed six people in Hong Kong in 1997 and 1998.
-
- South Korea's poultry industry has 100 million chickens
mainly for local consumption with little in the way of exports, official
data showed.
-
- Since 1996, South Korea has only reported cases of low
pathogenic avian influenza.
-
- The ministry said it was monitoring farms within a 10-km
(six-mile) radius of the affected farm.
-
- Earlier this year the Netherlands, the world's fourth-largest
poultry exporter, slaughtered around 26 million birds at some 250 farms
to contain a bird flu outbreak.
-
- The disease also spread to neighboring Belgium and Germany,
although on a lesser scale than in the Netherlands. All those three countries
later resumed poultry exports.
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