Quarantine officials work to cull chickens at a broiler farm in the county of Yesan, 134 kilometers south of Seoul, on Dec. 27, 2020, after an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza was confirmed there, in this photo provided by the county office.
SEOUL, Jan. 7 (Korea Bizwire) — At least 13.6 million chickens have been culled following the spread of avian influenza and African swine flu.
Farms and animal protection agencies are protesting against the cull, calling it inhumane and excessive.
Animal protection law dictates that animals should be subject to a minimum amount of pain during a cull, and must be rendered unconscious before being killed.
In reality, however, the wild spread of animal diseases often results with violations of these rules.
Animal protection agencies have been calling on the need to protect animals from severe pain, as well as psychological remedies for those carrying out the cull.
The so-called preventive culls always spark a new round of controversy every time a pandemic breaks out.
The Central Disaster Management Headquarters for Avian Influenza is currently undergoing preventive culls for all poultry living within a 3-kilometer radius of where the influenza first broke out.
Some argue, however, that the effectiveness of preventive culls has not been scientifically proven and the practice is no less than the result of ‘paper administration’.
The Korea Broiler Council called upon authorities on Jan. 1 to put a stop to all preventive culls immediately, criticizing the country’s quarantine policies as ‘extreme’ compared to foreign governments that typically set the grounds for culls based on poultry population density.
H. M. Kang (hmkang@koreabizwire.com)
