Direct or indirect imports of birds and related products from the Republic of Korea (ROK) were banned by the Ministry of Agriculture and the State Administration of Quality, Supervision, Inspection, and Quarantine Tuesday.

South Korean health officials wearing protective suits collect dead chickens to bury in Kyungju, southeast of Seoul, Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2003. South Korean authorities have marked nearly one million chickens and ducks for slaughter to help contain a highly contagious bird flu spreading throughout the country, officials said Tuesday.[AP Photo]

ROK said on Monday it had confirmed a case of a highly contagious type of bird flu, which can be deadly to humans, at a chicken farm near Seoul.

On December, 17, 2003, ROK's Agriculture Ministry reported to the World Organization for Animal Health that the highly contagious type of bird flu, known as H5N1, had broken out in a chicken farm and a duck farm in Eumsung district of Chungcheong-buk, a province in central part of the country, and 80 kilometres southeast of Seoul.

About a million chickens and ducks will be slaughtered across the country, the government of ROK said Monday.

After authorities of ROK confirmed the first case, the number of infected farms rose from two to eight.

To prevent the virus from entering China, and to protect the country's animal health, the two ministries have also issued orders for any ROK poultry and bird products already in China to be returned or destroyed.

Faced with the rapid increase in cases, agriculture authorities have raised slaughter targets to about 950,000 birds among the 100 million chickens and eight million ducks in the poultry sector.

Guo Yuanji, a researcher at the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, said China began working on prevention of H5N1 several years ago. To date, there have been no human cases in China.

"But China is a large agricultural country, and flu is a frequently-occurring disease. The birds flu should be prevented carefully," Guo also said.

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