Fears grow as animal disease spreads in South Korea

SEOUL: South Korea stepped up major quarantine efforts on Monday as a highly contagious animal disease threatened the centre of its livestock industry.Quarantine officials helped by police and troops have culled some 49,000 animals.
Foot-and-mouth disease affects cloven-hoofed animals including cows, sheep, goats and deer. It is rarely transmitted to humans but spreads easily between animals.
Foot-and-mouth outbreaks in 2000 and 2002 cost South Korea an estimated 450 billion won, including compensation. The government has paid about 55 billion won (49 million dollars) in compensation alone to farmers so far this year.

Wikipedia:
Culling is the process of removing animals from a group based on specific criteria. This is done in order to either reinforce certain desirable characteristics or to remove certain undesirable characteristics from the group. For livestock and wildlife, the process of culling usually implies the killing of animals with undesirable characteristics.


Comments:
The article really saddens me as I think about the amount of cattles and other cloven-hooved animals that would have to be killed to prevent the furthur spread of this Foot-Mouth disease. A large number of animals that were raised for research were also culled. The animals were raised to benefit the humans yet humans are the ones taking away their lives. But then again, to save the rest of the animals in the country, the government has no choice but to make this decision. Although knowing that this disease cannot be passed to human, I couldn't help but think of the consequences if the disease is transmitted to humans. Wouldn't other countries be affected by it then as it is hard to track down who was in contact with who and quarantine them? It would be just like the SARS outbreak that happened in 2003. What do you think?


Isabel.


Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culling

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/1054108/1/.html