South Korean quarantine workers have killed 309 heads of livestock Friday in the wake of the outbreak of the foot-and-mouth disease in the country, Xinhua quoted Seoul"s Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries as saying. The workers culled and buried 264 milk cows and 45 goats within 300-meter radius of the dairy farm in Pocheon, 46 kilometers north of Seoul in Gyeonggi Province, where six of the farm"s 185 milk cows, all culled on Friday, were confirmed to have contracted the virus. The foot-and-mouth disease is a highly contagious and sometimes fatal disease that can affect cloven-hoofed animals, including sheep and goats, while humans are hardly affected by the virus. The country will continue carrying out quarantine measures restricting movement of animals in the region in order to prevent further spread, the ministry said. The recent outbreak is the first one in eight years, after the country suffered the outbreak in 2000 and 2002, which caused a fall in dairy exports.
