EU member states pass new swine fever controls
Veterinary officials have this year confirmed four cases in districts close to Belarus, sparking a Russian pigmeat import ban that has been roundly criticised by the EU as an overreaction.
However, EU animal health officials have continued to work on detailed movement restrictions, and have now approved one comprehensive anti-African Swine Fever regulation.
This imposes restrictions on the movement of live pigs, semen and pig meat in an infected area within Poland and Lithuania. Such controls can be eased where meat and livestock producers demonstrate they have carried out effective risk mitigation measures, such as testing and biosecurity.
Less intrusive checks and surveillance will also be imposed on live pigs being moved in a buffer zone within Poland and Lithuania next to the districts where swine fever has been detected in boars.
The EU’s Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health also confirmed that existing controls on pigs and pigmeat in Sardinia, Italy, would continue because of African Swine Fever concerns on that island. And it approved an EU decision providing €3.5m to help finance actions fighting the disease in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
A European Commission note said: "The financing… is for surveillance, biosecurity, targeted awareness campaigns, and compensation to farmers for early slaughtering and emptying low biosecurity backyard farms at risk." It said these funded actions would continue until at least December 2017.
It added that the recent swine fever cases are "linked to the prolonged presence of ASF in the western regions of Russia and the introduction of the disease in Belarus". All four countries share borders with these areas, where infected wild boar can roam into the EU.
