Slovakia has confirmed its first foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in 50 years at three farms near the border with Hungary, the government said on Friday, following cases there and in Germany.
Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is a highly contagious viral infection that is not dangerous to humans but which affects cattle and other cloven-hoofed animals, including sheep and pigs.
Symptoms include fever and blisters in the mouth and near the hoof.
In January, Germany reported FMD cases in a Berlin water buffalo farm, the first outbreak in the European Union since 2011, prompting several countries to stop German meat imports.
Foot-and-mouth disease has been confirmed in three cattle farms in southern Slovakia, agriculture minister Richard Takac said, adding it was a “very serious and a very big problem”.
The farms each have 600 to 1,000 young cattle and dairy cows, with symptoms first emerging on Tuesday.
“As FMD has been confirmed, we will cull all the livestock,” Pavel Majercak, a representative for two of the farms, told AFP, describing the outbreak as “a disaster for agriculture”.
The last time the disease occurred in the country was in 1974.
In reaction, the neighbouring Czech Republic put up border controls and banned cattle imports from Slovakia from Friday.
Similar measures are also in force for animal imports from Hungary, where the disease was reported on March 7.
In 2011, hundreds of animals were culled in Bulgaria after an outbreak there.
In a previous outbreak in Europe, more than 2,000 animals were culled to control the disease in the UK after a spate of cases in 2007, according to the British government.
In 2001, up to 10 million animals were culled in a foot-and-mouth outbreak in the UK which cost the national economy about £8 billion ($10 billion).
Via AFP
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