South Korea Tightens African Swine Fever Controls from Ports to Pig Farms

The South Korean government has launched a comprehensive “full‑cycle” bio‑security plan to block further spread of African swine fever (ASF). After 24 outbreaks were recorded between 16 January and 16 March 2024 across seven provinces, no new cases have been reported since the March 16 deadline, and movement restrictions were lifted on 22 April. Nonetheless, 22 counties with virus‑positive wild boars remain classified as high‑risk.

The plan covers every stage of the pork supply chain: entry screening of foreign workers (with automatic notification to farm owners and multilingual training), stricter quarantine at airports and seaports, expanded X‑ray and detection‑dog checks, and harsher penalties for illegal meat imports. Farm inspections shift from random blood tests to targeted necropsy and environmental sampling, while 64 slaughterhouses will undergo year‑round ASF testing and 36 facilities that use blood‑based feed will have daily blood sampling. Feed manufacturers must adopt standardized sterilisation processes and keep detailed production records. Wild boar management will be customized regionally, adding GPS‑tracked traps and deploying detection dogs in outbreak zones.

Park Jung‑hoon, senior official at the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, said the recent surge “results from a mix of contaminated feed, illegal meat and human activity,” and that the new measures aim to “fundamentally block virus entry at every point, from foreign worker arrival to farm, slaughterhouse and feed production, while also controlling wild boar reservoirs.”