Bulgaria announces measures following ovine rinderpest outbreak
Bulgaria’s operations headquarters set up to deal with the outbreak of ovine rinderpest said on July 16 that payment of compensation to owners whose sheep and goats had been culled was beginning.
Agriculture Minister Roumen Porozhanov said that transfers to bank accounts of owners of the animals would begin that afternoon.
The headquarters called for the cancellation of meetings and events in a 10km radius around areas where there had been outbreaks of the sickness.
Control of transport of meat products across Bulgaria’s borders had been strengthened, the statement said.
Following criticism of the government’s handling of the crisis by the opposition Bulgarian Socialist Party, President Roumen Radev issued a statement on July 16 also levelling criticism.
Radev, elected on a ticket backed by the BSP, raised several questions, including why there had not been preventative measures, why vaccination had been neglected and said that again, there was the question of the reliability of the border fence.
Deputy Prime Minister Valeri Simeonov, of the ultra-nationalist United Patriots minority partner in government, said that he had referred to the State Agency for National Security the claim that unregulated trade in livestock between Bulgarian and Turkish breeders had led to the spread of the sickness in Bulgaria’s Strandzha and Sakar areas.
(Photo: Eszter Szöllõsi/freeimages.com)
