Agriculture Minister: African Swine Fever has cost Bulgaria 20% of its pigs
Outbreaks of African Swine Fever (ASF) have meant the loss of about 20 per cent of the pigs in Bulgaria, Agriculture Minister Dessislava Taneva said on October 1.
Taneva said that the peak of the outbreak was over, but not the crisis.
To date, 79 outbreaks of ASF have been registered in Bulgaria, covering 200 square kilometres.
In about eight per cent of the country’s territory, where ASF outbreaks have been confirmed, forestry activities have been banned for two months.
Asked if she thought the lack of access to logging would push up timber prices in Bulgaria, Taneva said that there should be no impact.
She said that areas where restriction orders had been issued because of outbreaks of ASF in wild boar would be reduced, probably today, depending on analysis of the epizootic situation.
Compensation already had been paid to farmers whose pig farms were affected by ASF. Taneva said that her ministry was in talks with the European Commission on further financing assistance, through the Rural Development Programme, to pay 100 per cent of costs for farmers for repopulating their pig farms and 80 per cent of the costs for biosecurity measures.
Taneva said that hygiene measures at both industrial and domestic pig farms must be implemented, underlining that these were elementary.
They include keeping pigs separately from other animals, storing their feed in proper conditions and people who work with pigs changing their clothes on leaving the farms.
(Photo of Taneva: Bulgaria’s Agriculture Ministry)
