AFRICAN SWINE FEVER CASE DETECTED

[Anchor Lead]

First cases of African Swine Fever this year have been confirmed at a hog farm in Gangwon-do Province, putting quarantine authorities in alert.

[Pkg]

African Swine Fever has a 100 percent mortality rate. South Korea reported its first case of the virus three years ago. It has mostly affected wild boar than domestic pigs. However, ASF cases have been confirmed recently at a hog farm in Hongcheon. It's located about one kilometer from where the body of a wild boar infected with the virus was found a week ago. It's the first case of ASF detected in domestic pigs in Korea this year. The farm owner found four of his pigs dead at around 8am Thursday. The Gangwon-do Animal Sanitation Testing Laboratory conducted autopsies on two of the four bodies and found they had been infected with ASF. Blood tests performed on 16 other pigs raised on the farm came back positive for 13 animals. Quarantine authorities are on high alert. The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs issued a 48-hour travel ban for hog farms, slaughterhouses and animal feed factories in Gyeonggi-do and Gangwon-do provinces. Epidemiologists and quarantine experts have been dispatched to the farm where infected dead animals were found. Some 30 quarantine officials will be deployed to cull all 1500 hogs on this farm. Emergency testing will be conducted on some 15,000 hogs at 15 farms in Hongcheon. Around 510,000 pigs at some 200 hog farms in Gangwon-do Province will also be tested for ASF.