Turning to the African swine fever outbreak in South Korea.
A suspected case reported on Sunday at a slaughterhouse in Hongseong, Chungcheongnam-do Province,… has turned up negative.
Based on the findings of the first autopsy,… the Agriculture Ministry concluded 19 pigs died on Sunday morning due to suffocation,… after they were put into the slaughterhouse at once.
The autopsy result is a massive relief to Hongseong, home to 2-point-3 million pigs,… but quarantine efforts are still under way to halt the further spread of the highly contagious animal disease, which was first reported in the country on September 17th.
With South Korea still struggling to identify the origin of the confirmed nine cases, Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon has instructed officials to look into all possibilities.
Insisting officials they act by the book,... the Prime Minister raised the possibility the outbreak may have originated from underground water or even small insects.
