The UK has banned imports of cows, pigs and sheeps from Germany to prevent the spread of foot-and-mouth disease, as on the 10th of January 2025, German authorities confirmed the country’s first outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in nearly 40 years in a herd of water buffalo on the outskirts of Berlin. An exclusion zone of 3km and a monitoring zone of 10km have been set up, and no more products or animals may be taken out of these zones.
Foot-and-mouth disease causes fever and mouth blisters in cloven-hoofed ruminants such as cows, pigs, sheeps and goats, and the UK has experienced severe outbreaks in the past. The outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the UK in 2001 saw 2,000 cases of the disease on farms across most of the British countryside. Over 6 million cows and sheep were slaughtered on farms in an attempt to halt the disease. Naturally, authorities now are very cautious and want to prevent this from happening again.
Christine Middlemiss, UK Chief Veterinary Officer, said, “We have robust contingency plans in place to manage the risk of this disease to protect farmers and Britain’s food security, which means using all measures to limit the risk incursion and spread of this devastating disease. I would urge livestock keepers to exercise the upmost vigilance for signs of disease.”
Also, there have been no imports of cows, sheep or pigs from Germany to Ireland since last November, the Department of Agriculture said in a statement last week. Charlie McConalogue, Irish Minister for Agriculture, said confirmation of the cases in Germany is “a terrible blow to German farmers.” Outbreaks of this type of infectious disease are common in animal agriculture, an industry in which animals are kept in such crowded conditions that any infection spreads quickly.
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