South Korea slaughters poultry amid H5N1 bird flu scare, 24 farms under quarantine

January 17, 2014 – SOUTH KOREA – South Korea started culling thousands of poultry after a preliminary test indicated the first possible outbreak of bird flu since 2011, officials said. A suspected case of avian influenza was reported yesterday at a poultry farm in Gochang in North Jeolla Province, some 300 kilometers southwest of Seoul, the agricultural ministry said. Local authorities had already begun culling all of the more than 20,000 ducks on the farm, it said. Quarantine measures were also enforced at 24 other farms in four different provinces that were known to have purchased ducks from the Gochang farm. Further testing from Gochang was under way, but the ministry said it was “highly likely”’ it would be confirmed as H5N1 avian flu. The last outbreak in South Korea occurred in 2011, when more than six million poultry were culled at more than 280 farms across the country. –The Standard

Outbreak reported in China: Indonesian Embassy in Beijing has issued a letter of warning to Indonesian nationals against the spread of bird flu cases in China. The embassy issued the warning after it received an official report from Chinese Agricultural Ministry about the outbreak of H5N1 bird flu virus in a number of areas in the country.  It was reported that the outbreak of bird flu was discovered on January 13, in the cities of Wan Jia in Yang Xin district, and Huang Shi in Hubei province.  According to the report, 3,200 chickens have died of H5N1 and 46,800 infected ones have been culled by the local city administrations. Since early January 2014, some 20 bird flu cases have been reported, and on January 15, three H7N9 cases were also reported in the provinces of Shanghai, Fujian and Zhejiang. Following the outbreak of H5N1 and H7N9 cases in China, the Indonesian Embassy in China has warned the Indonesian nationals in the country to stay alert and keep themselves safe from the deadly disease. –Antara News