Foot-and-mouth disease breaks out again in Yecheon; alert raised to highest level

Foot-and-mouth disease has been detected at two more cattle farms in Yecheon-gun, North Gyeongsang Province. The government raised the FMD crisis alert for Yecheon-gun to "serious" — the highest level — and issued a 24-hour temporary movement ban covering Yecheon and six neighboring cities and counties. Emergency vaccinations and clinical inspections have begun for approximately 436,000 cattle, goats and other cloven-hoofed animals in Yecheon and adjacent areas.

The Central Disaster Management Headquarters for Foot-and-Mouth Disease said Thursday that surveillance inspections at two cattle farms in Yecheon-gun, North Gyeongsang Province, confirmed 32 animals testing positive for the FMD antigen.

The farms where the disease was confirmed had previously been placed under movement restrictions and biosecurity management after infection antibodies (NSP) were detected. The headquarters identified the antigen while conducting surveillance inspections to determine whether the virus was circulating among farms where infection antibodies had been found.

The latest cases bring the total number of domestic FMD outbreaks this year to 11. Three outbreaks occurred in Ganghwa and Goyang between January and February, six in Yecheon in July, and two more in Yecheon this month.

The government raised the FMD crisis alert for Yecheon-gun from "caution" to "serious," while the alert level for the rest of the country was raised from "caution" to "attention."

A 24-hour temporary movement ban took effect at 10 a.m. Thursday for workers and vehicles at livestock-related facilities — including cloven-hoofed animal farms, slaughterhouses and feed factories — in seven cities and counties: Yecheon-gun, Andong, Uiseong-gun, Sangju, Mungyeong, Yeongju and Danyang-gun in North Chungcheong Province. The ban runs through 10 a.m. Friday. All affected facilities and vehicles will undergo comprehensive disinfection and cleaning, and joint inspection teams from the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs and the Animal and Plant Quarantine Agency will be deployed to verify compliance.

Based on detailed and clinical inspection results showing high vaccine antibody positivity rates and no clinical symptoms, authorities plan to cull only the 32 confirmed positive animals at the affected farms.

Emergency vaccinations and clinical inspections will be carried out at all 1,515 cloven-hoofed animal farms in Yecheon-gun, covering 117,253 animals, as well as at 6,330 cattle and goat farms in neighboring cities and counties, covering 318,489 animals — a combined total of 435,742 head. Telephone surveillance will also be conducted across all cloven-hoofed animal farms nationwide.

Sixty-nine pieces of equipment, including wide-area sprayers and disinfection vehicles, will be mobilized to intensively disinfect farms and surrounding roads in the outbreak area and the six adjacent cities and counties.

Park Jeong-hun, director general for food policy at the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, called the situation "grave, with foot-and-mouth disease breaking out in Yecheon, North Gyeongsang Province, just ahead of the chuseok holiday." He urged relevant agencies and local governments to "make every effort on biosecurity measures, including swift culling of livestock, detailed inspections and intensive disinfection." He also called on officials to "ensure thorough vaccine administration and biosecurity management so that no animals are missed during the emergency vaccination in Yecheon-gun and the nationwide vaccination of cattle and goats."