A farm ministry panel on Friday approved a plan to allow the preventive culling of healthy pigs within 3 km of confirmed African swine fever outbreaks.

The measure will be included in the ministry’s guidelines under the revised law on controlling domestic animal infectious diseases, which is scheduled to take effect Wednesday.

The guidelines stipulate that preventive culling is allowable only if there are no other measures available to prevent the spread of African swine fever.

The preventive culling will be allowed within 500 meters to 3 km of infected farms or places where infected wild boars are discovered.

In the latter case, the culling zone will be set based on levels of hygiene control at pig farms in the neighborhood as well as the distribution of the local boar population.