Any direct or indirect imports of birds and related products from the Republic of Korea (ROK) is banned, announced the Ministry of Agriculture and the State Administration of Quality, Supervision, Inspection, and Quarantine Tuesday.  

ROK said Monday it had confirmed a case of a highly contagious type of bird flu, which can be deadly to humans, at a chicken farm near Seoul.

On December, 17, 2003, ROK's Agriculture Ministry reported to the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) that the highly contagious type of bird flu, known as H5N1, had broken out in a chicken farm and a duck farm in Eumsung district of Chungcheong-buk, a province in central part of the country, and 80 kilometers southeast of Seoul.

About a million chickens and ducks will be slaughtered across the country, the government of ROK said Monday.

After authorities of ROK confirmed the first case, the number of infected farms rose from two to eight.

To prevent the virus from entering China, and to protect the country's animal health, the two ministries have also issued orders for any ROK poultry and birds products already in China to be returned or destroyed.

Faced with the rapid increase in cases, agriculture authorities have raised slaughter targets to about 950,000 birds among the 100 million chickens and eight million ducks in the poultry sector.

Guo Yuanji, a researcher at the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, said China began working on prevention of H5N1 several years ago. To date, there have been no human cases in China.

"But China is a large agricultural country, and flu is a frequently-occurring disease. The bird flu should be prevented carefully." Guo also said.

The H5N1 strain appeared in Hong Kong in 1997 and 1998 and killed six people there.

(China Daily December 24, 2003)