Meeting of parliamentary floor leaders over the cases of livestock plague
Bulgarian Parliament Speaker Tsveta Karayancheva on 17th of July called an ad hoc meeting, at which the leaders of all parliamentary groups were informed about the cases of livestock plague in the country.
After the meeting it became clear that there are cases of livestock plague and this is proved by laboratory tests done in France.
The disease is currently spread in 7 settlements in two regions - Bourgas and Yambol (Bulgaria's Strandzha region, close to the border with Turkey).
According to the government, the measures taken so far have been adequate. As a weakness, it has been pointed that the farmers were niot well informed. .
The leader of opposition solists party (BSP) Kornelia Ninova believes that everything that has been done so far has not been legal, so she has demanded the resignation of the Minister of Agriculture Rumen Porozhanov.
Measures to prevent the spread of sheep and goat plague (Peste de Petits Ruminants) were adopted on July 5.
Bulgaria established protection and surveillance zones immediately after the outbreak was confirmed on June 22 and herds in which infected animals were detected started being euthanised three weeks ago.
The Head of Bulgaria’s Food Safety Agency Damyan Iliev said on 15th of July at a press conference that over 4,000 sheep and goats were culled in Strandzha region, close to the border with Turkey in order to prevent further spreading of the disease and to avert an EU ban on exports of Bulgarian milk and dairy products.
An expert mission from the European Commission's DG Food Safety arrived in Bulgaria on Monday, 16th of July. The aim is to establish whether the measures taken by the Bulgarian authorities to contain the sprreading of the disease meet EU law requirements.
