EMERGENCY OUTBREAK OF ASF

[Anchor Lead]

The outbreak of the African swine fever, a disease deadly to pigs, was first confirmed in Paju, Gyeonggido Province on Tuesday. A suspected case subsequently reported in Yeoncheon in the same province has now also been confirmed. The second location is about 50 kilometers from the Paju pig farm. We take you there for the details.

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​The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs has confirmed the second case of African swine fever early Wednesday at around 7 a.m. The confirmation follows DNA test results from the Yeoncheon farm which had alerted authorities that one of its pigs had died on Tuesday. This marks the second case of ASF following the first outbreak in Korea early Tuesday. The farm in Yeoncheon is about 50 kilometers from the Paju farm where the disease was first reported. The Yeoncheon farm was raising 47-hundred pigs and there are five farms within a 3 kilometer radius, rearing a combined 13-thousand pigs. Gyeonggido Province has disposed of all the 47-hundred pigs from the Yeoncheon farm. Earlier, the first case of ASF was confirmed at the Paju farm where five female hogs died from fever. Authorities immediately ran tests and the farm tested positive for the African swine fever virus. The government has since culled nearly four-thousand pigs raised at the farm in question as well as two other farms belonging to the same owner. Agriculture Minister Kim Hyeon-soo held an urgent briefing Tuesday and said quarantine measures were under way, adding there were no pig farms within a 3 kilometer radius of the first reported farm. But in just one day, the second case was confirmed in a farm in Yeoncheon 50 kilometers away, putting northern Gyeonggido Province areas on high alert. However, it is not yet known whether the virus spread from Paju or if the Yeoncheon case had a different source of infection. African swine fever is an infectious hemorrhagic viral disease that only affects animals of the swine family. But the fatality rate can be as high as 100%. The 198 pigs shipped out from the Paju farm during the incubation period of the ASF virus have all been pulled out from the market during distribution and were culled on Wednesday.