Incheon city, completed the culling of 243 cows at farms in Ganghwa County due to foot-and-mouth disease outbreak.

(Incheon=Yonhap News) Reporter Hwang Jeong-hwan = Incheon announced on the 1st that it has culled and buried 243 cows raised on a farm in Gwanghwa County, where foot-and-mouth disease has occurred. The city is conducting cleaning and disinfection of the farm facilities to prevent the spread of foot-and-mouth disease and is pushing for emergency disease control measures for nearby farms. It is also implementing movement restrictions and clinical examinations for around 70 livestock farms within a 3-kilometer radius of the affected area. Furthermore, Incheon plans to complete emergency vaccinations for 747 livestock farms and 49,211 cattle by the 8th. Initially, the city had announced plans to cull 246 cows based on the farm owner's statement, but the final count was confirmed to be 243. Foot-and-mouth disease, which broke out the previous day at a cow farm in Songhae-myeon, Gwanghwa County, has prompted the Central Accident Response Headquarters to raise the alert level from 'concern' to'serious' for Incheon and Kimpo City in Gyeonggi Province, and to 'caution' for other regions. It has also issued a 48-hour order to halt the movement of cloven-hoofed animals until 1 AM on the 2nd. Foot-and-mouth disease is a highly contagious disease that affects cloven-hoofed animals such as cows, pigs, sheep, and goats and is classified as a Class 1 livestock infectious disease. The occurrence of foot-and-mouth disease in South Korea is about nine months after it broke out in Yeongam County, Jeollanam-do on April 13 last year, and about 11 years after it occurred in a pig farm in Gwanghwa County, Incheon in March 2015. hwan@yna.co.kr