Virulent Bird Flu Strain Confirmed in Jeongeup

Highly pathogenic avian influenza is confirmed to have broken out in the southwestern city of Jeongeup, the second after one on a chicken farm in Gimje, North Jeolla Province.

The Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry announced Monday that the H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus killed ducks on a farm in the town of Yeongwon near Jeongeup as reported Thursday.

The number of poultry farms with or suspected of having bird flu has increased to four after the first outbreak was confirmed in a chicken farm in the town of Yeongji last week.

Quarantine authorities of North Jeolla Province examined a duck farm in the town of Gobu, where 700 of the bird died Saturday. They suspect the possibility of a H5N1 outbreak.

The farm is only 4.5 kilometers away from where the virus was first detected. Bird flu symptoms such as bleeding in the kidney were found among ducks in the first autopsy.

Health authorities prohibited 18,000 ducks from the Gobu farm from being carried out and are considering culling them.

Fine Korea, a duck butchery in Naju, South Jeolla Province, has culled 6,520 ducks from Yeongwon. The company has been ordered to bury 30,000 out of 90,000 slaughtered over the past two to five days, including the ducks it culled.

Sixty-thousand of the dead ducks are being collected as they are already on the market.

Kim Chang-seop, the ministry’s director for animal disease prevention, said, “Though ducks on the market are not directly related to avian influenza, we are collecting them because they might have been contaminated by the butchery machine. Even if they were contaminated, their meat is safe.”

changkim@donga.com kokim@donga.com