Foot-and-mouth disease confirmed at pig, cattle farms in North Gyeongsang Province

Foot-and-mouth disease has been confirmed at a pig farm and nearby cattle farms in Yecheon-gun, North Gyeongsang Province. The government raised the crisis alert level to "Serious" for seven cities and counties, including Yecheon-gun, and launched emergency containment measures including a 48-hour livestock movement ban and urgent vaccinations.

The Central Foot-and-Mouth Disease Response Headquarters said Thursday that laboratory tests confirmed the disease at one pig farm in Yecheon-gun and five cattle farms within a 500-meter radius of that farm.

The outbreak traces back to June 25, when routine surveillance at a slaughterhouse in North Gyeongsang Province detected foot-and-mouth disease antigens on a conveyor belt used to transport pig offal. Authorities traced 39 farms that had supplied animals to the slaughterhouse and, after finding foot-and-mouth disease infection antibodies (NSP) at the Yecheon pig farm, conducted further confirmatory tests.

Those tests found 14 pigs at the pig farm and 24 cattle at nearby farms testing positive for the antigen. No animals showed clinical symptoms of the disease.

The response headquarters said it would cull only the infected animals rather than entire herds, citing the high antibody-positive rate at the farm level as grounds for selective rather than blanket culling.

To prevent the disease from spreading, the government raised the crisis alert level to "Serious" for seven cities and counties — Yecheon-gun, Andong, Uiseong, Sangju, Mungyeong, Yeongju and Danyang in North Chungcheong Province — and elevated the rest of the country to "Caution."

Authorities also issued a 48-hour standstill order, effective from 10 a.m. Thursday through 10 a.m. Saturday, barring workers and vehicles at cloven-hoofed animal farms, slaughterhouses and feed factories in and around the affected areas from moving.

Intensive surveillance will cover 125 cloven-hoofed animal farms within a 3-kilometer radius of the outbreak site, and 58 large-scale disinfection vehicles and sprayers will be deployed to disinfect farms and surrounding roads.

Emergency vaccinations and clinical inspections will be carried out at 7,976 cloven-hoofed animal farms — housing about 840,000 animals — across Yecheon-gun and the six adjacent cities and counties from Thursday through July 17. Telephone-based surveillance of cloven-hoofed livestock farms nationwide is also planned.

The response headquarters urged farm operators to cooperate fully with biosecurity measures, including emergency vaccinations and farm disinfection. "Since this outbreak has been confirmed simultaneously at both pig and cattle farms, we ask that you strictly follow basic biosecurity protocols, including disinfection and changing boots when entering farms," it said.