A case of the foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), one of infectious livestock diseases, was detected at a dairy farm in Boeun-gun county, Chungcheonbuk-do province located in a central part of the Republic of Korea, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs of South Korea (MAFRA) announced on February 6.
MAFRA confirmed the first discovery of the disease in the country in eleven months.
According to MAFRA, the FMD case was confirmed on February 5, after five heads of dairy cattle infected with quasi-foot-and-mouth disease were reported by the farm in Boeun-gun county, which raised 195 cows.
The five cows got water blisters on their teats. The inspection revealed that these cows were infected with FMD.
South Korea had experienced the worst-ever FMD epidemic from November 2010 to May 2011, when as many as 3.48 million heads of cattle and swine were culled to contain the disease.
MAFRA officials hope that FMD will be unlikely to spread throughout the country, since most of the cattle and swine have been vaccinated against FMD during a period of its special campaign for FMD prevention from October 2016 to May 2017.