The Veterinary Epidemiology Division of The Animal, Plant, and Fisheries Quarantine and Inspection Agency (QIA) was established in 2002. It is the first governmental organization in the Republic of Korea to be charged with the epidemiological task of managing veterinary public health. In commemorating the previous efforts of this organization, this paper describes the brief history, concept, tools, and approaches of veterinary epidemiology. The mission of veterinary epidemiology, as a leader of 'One Health', to improve the public health status of human and animal is also discussed.

Over the past decade, the magnitude and variety of modelling work in the realm of veterinary services has shown a significant increase. Accordingly, the need for enhancement of communication and cooperation among modellers (those who develop models), users (those who run models), policy makers (those who use model outputs in decision making on control policy) and coordinators (those who connect modellers with policy makers) has also shown a notable increase. In this paper, terms used in epidemiological models are listed alphabetically and explained. It is expected that development of this lexicon will help to boost communication and collaboration among those concerned with modelling work and its utilization.

During the past dozens of years, animal species indigenous to Korea has been emerged as a symbol of healthy and well-being lifestyle. Developing new cross hybrid and making brand in Korean native chickens serve as an example of pursuing a well-being life. However, lack of systematic management. intervention from the small scaled middlemen during the multi-stages of marketing, poor hygiene at moorings and live bird market, and possibility of contacting to wild birds have been pointed out as risk factors to the outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza ([1PM), especially for small back yard flocks. This study describes the schema of husbandry and marketing on Korean native chickens, and their putative associations with the outbreaks of RPM during the last two big epidemics occurred in the Republic of Korea, which were in the year of 2008 and 2010/2011.

Epidemic models on disease spread attempt to simulate disease transmission and associated control processes. This study reviewed published papers on epidemiological models for the management of foot-and-mouth disease in the world. In addition, an individual animal-based, spatially-explicit, stochastic disease transmission model, the Davis Animal Disease Simulation (DADS) model, was described in the frame of an international collaborative research project participating three countries: Republic of Korea, USA, and New Zealand. In this project, the Korean team is aiming at developing the most appropriate parameters for livestock and epidemiology of foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks. On the other hand, the purpose of foreign counterparts is validating their models: DADS (USA) and InterSpread Plus (New Zealand). Classification of farm types and preliminary estimations on the frequency of intra-herd contacts were also presented. This research project is expected to provide precious information to plan a strategy that will facilitate the eradication of foot-and-mouth disease from Korea.

Since there had been the first human outbreak of novel influenza A/H1N1 in Mexico, it has become pandemic throughout the world. In the Republic of Korea, the first human case was on May, 2009 and National Veterinary Research and Quarantine Service (NVRQS) has started monitoring novel influenza A/H1N1 on domestic swine farms. The first positive case was detected on 14, Dec, 2009 and until now, we have had total 17 positive cases. From the first case, we did epidemiological investigation on introduction and transmission of virus to pigs. We have concluded that virus had been introduced from humans to pigs, possibly from October to November, 2009 in our country. There were direct and indirect factors including the vehicles transporting veterinary medicine, feed, etc. related to transmission of virus from farm to farm. However, breeding pigs seem to be extrinsic to transmitting factors. Upon the epidemiological investigation, the off-limits of visitors to farms and the disinfection is thought to be critical for blocking the introduction and transmission of novel influenza A/H1N1. In addition, collecting and analyzing the genetic informations of influenza virus is important for predicting and handling the new pandemic influenza in the future.

This paper describes an investigation of an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in Republic of Korea in January 2010. In this paper, we investigated introduction to the index farm from overseas countries, transmission from index farm to other outbreak farms. The introduction factors were divided direct, indirect factors or airborne spread factor. Based on the epidemiological data, clinical information and other data, in these introduction factors, it was likely that outbreak of FMD in index farm was due to international goods or employees from overseas countries (including China). There were other suggested causes in index farm. But it was less likely that outbreak of FMD in index farm have occurred by other causes. The transmission factors from index farm to other farms were also divided direct, indirect factors or airborne spread factor. In these transmission factors it was possible to make assumptions from index farm to other outbreak farms that the FMD virus was transmitted through animal treatment, persons concerned and persons (who were) attended farmers’ assembly.