South Korea bird flu outbreak

South Korea
A cull of thousands of chickens has begun near the capital Seoul in South Korea after a new bird flu outbreak was discovered. Avian influenza reemerged in South Korea three months ago after a three-year absence and this is the sixth outbreak since then

THe outbreak was identified on Tuesday at a poultry farm, housing more than 130,000 chickens, near Ansung near Seoul, officials said. Tests have yet to confirm if it is the H5N1 strain which is potentially fatal to humans. The agriculture ministry released a statement confirming that breeding chickens at a farm in Iljuk village had been infected with the highly contagious bird flu virus.

In addition to culling the birds at the farm where the outbreak occurred officials have ordered a cull of another 107,000 on nearby farms.

More than two million birds will have been slaughtered in the country since bird flu reappeared there in November 2006.

Given the numbers of birds at the farm involved in this latest outbreak this will fuel the arguments of those who claim that avian influenza, or to be more specific, the H5N1 strain, is intimately connected with intensive poutry systems. It has been suggested that the virus may have indeed arisn in such intensive production systems and spread from there to wild birds rather than the transmission route being the other way. Such speculation is as yet unproved.