ASSOCIATED PRESS
SEOUL—South Korea plans to kill cats and dogs to try to prevent the spread of bird flu after an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 virus at a chicken farm last week, officials said.
Animal-health experts, however, questioned the policy when there was no definitive scientific evidence to suggest that cats or dogs could pass the virus to humans.
Quarantine officials have killed 125,000 chickens within a 500-meter radius of the outbreak site in Iksan, about 250 kilometers south of Seoul, the Agriculture Ministry said yesterday.
Officials began slaughtering poultry on Sunday, a day after they confirmed that the outbreak was caused by the H5N1 strain.
They plan to slaughter a total of 236,000 poultry, as well as an unspecified number of other animals, including pigs, and all dogs and cats in the area by Thursday, the ministry said. About six million eggs also will be destroyed, it said.
Slaughtering cats and dogs near an area infected with bird flu would be highly unusual in Asia. Indonesia has killed pigs in the past, but most countries concentrate solely on destroying poultry. However, it wouldn’t be the first time for South Korea to kill cats and dogs because of bird flu concerns. An official at the Agriculture Ministry said South Korea had slaughtered cats and dogs along with 5.3 million birds during the last known outbreak of bird flu in the country in 2003.
Another ministry official, Kim Chang Sup, insisted killing cats and dogs to curtail the spread of bird flu wasn’t unusual.
“Other countries do it. They just don’t talk about it,” Mr. Kim said, adding that all mammals are potentially subject to the virus and that South Korea is just trying to take all possible precautionary measures.
But animal experts disputed the validity in culling cats and dogs.
“It’s highly unusual, and it’s not a science-based decision,” said Peter Roeder, a Rome-based animal health expert with the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization, or FAO, who published research about cats and bird flu earlier this year in the journal Nature.
Jeff Gilbert, an animal-health expert at the FAO in Vietnam, described South Korea’s plan as “a bit of an extreme measure.”
Dr. Gilbert said dogs and cats have been known to occasionally become infected, but they pose little risk to humans.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s Center for Food Safety said yesterday that it will suspend South Korean poultry imports over bird-flu concerns. Japan announced a temporary suspension of South Korean poultry imports last week.
The Hong Kong center said it will seek further information about the case from South Korean authorities.
The H5N1 virus began ravaging Asian poultry stocks in late 2003 and has killed at least 153 people world-wide.