Page 289 of articles about health

The sharp fall in bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) cases in the EU must not lead to a slackening of surveillance, say MEPs in a resolution passed on Wednesday. Any change to BSE safety rules must maintain high animal and public health standards, but the ban on feeding animal protein to non-ruminants, such as pigs, could gradually be lifted if further safeguards are put in place, they add.

The situation over the swine fever outbreak in Russian is not improving, Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov said on Tuesday.

Following the recent Dioxin scandal at the beginning of the year, the Ministry of Agriculture has now legally established an early warning system for food products and feedstuff.

On July 3, the Lithuanian authorities gave notice of a secondary source of Classical Swine Fever on a swine farm with a census of 2.045 animals.

Livestock farmers who do not have a foot and mouth disease (FMD) vaccination certificate for their livestock will be unable to do business at a livestock market and will be denied permission to ship livestock products to slaughterhouses.

On June 29 the South African Minister of Agriculture announced the opening of their markets to the importation of pork from Brazil, which had been suspended after the detection of Foot and Mouth Disease in Brazil in 2005.

Korea aims to introduce a tracking system for all pork sold on the local market starting in 2014 to make it easier to recall substandard products, the government said yesterday.

Spain has officially informed the Commission that the Centro de Investigación en Sanidad Animal (CISA), Valdeolmos, Madrid, complies with the requirements laid down in Article 65 of Directive 2003/85/EC. Spain requested that the CISA be added to the list of national laboratories, authorised to handle the live foot-and- mouth disease virus, set out in Part A of Annex XI to that Directive.

Since no new outbreaks have been reported since 7 April 2011 and surveillance has been implemented with satisfactory results, the Commission adopted today a decision reducing the affected areas.

A foot-and-mouth epidemic has broken out in 39 provinces, affecting more than 150,000 head of cattle. More than 45,000 animals have died or been destroyed, including over 5,000 buffalos, 938 cows, 37,760 pigs and 329 goats.

In this report the results of the investigation regarding the different options for replacing the current EU rules for co-financing of emergency measures are described. Five different policy options are evaluated and the economic impact, likelihood, timescale, magnitude of direct and consequential/indirect costs and monetization of impacts are assessed. Special emphasis is given on the feasibility of an EU harmonized framework for a Cost and Responsibility Sharing Schemes (CRSS).

A new Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) survey has shown no human health implications from antimicrobial resistance in New Zealand food-producing animals and fresh produce.