South Korea has banned imports of poultry and eggs from the Netherlands on confirmed outbreak of the highly pathogenic bird flu virus in a Dutch duck farm.

The Korean Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs announced that it has prohibited importing all live fowls and birds including chicks, ducklings, as well as poultry meats and fresh eggs from the Netherlands as of Tuesday upon the report of an outbreak of highly pathogenic H5N6 avian flu influenza in a Dutch duck farm.

The Netherlands discovered the H5N6 strain on a duck fattening farm of 16,000 birds in Flevoland province and reported to the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) on Sunday (local time).

Korea has imported 5.28 million chicks and 280,000 ducklings but no poultry meats and eggs from the Netherlands this year until the AI outbreak.

While any new imports of all live birds, chicks, and fresh eggs from the Netherlands will be banned from entering Korea, those already loaded for shipping to the country between Dec. 10 and 12 or in the middle of quarantine process will be examined for AI virus and treated accordingly, said the agriculture ministry. But imports of heat-treated poultry meats and eggs will be excluded from the ban.

Korea has become extra careful over bird flu virus after it had to kill millions of live chickens and ducks in November 2016 due to slow early-stage action. Prices of fresh eggs shot up due to a shortage of supplies earlier this year and the country has been bringing in hens and hatching-eggs from overseas. Korea has imported fowls and eggs from selective foreign countries amid a series of avian flu outbreaks across the globe since last year.

By Lee Yu-sup and Cho Jeehyun

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