HAMBURG (Reuters) – Germany has regained its status as free of foot-and-mouth disease in most areas of the country, opening the way for the lifting of export restrictions on meat and dairy products, Germany’s agriculture ministry said on Wednesday.
Germany announced the country’s first outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in nearly 40 years on January 10 in a herd of water buffalo near Berlin in the Brandenburg region. The outbreak remains limited to one case, with no others reported since. The source of the case is still unknown but most domestic restrictions following the case are already lifted.
The World Organisation for Animal Health has accepted an application to have most of Germany declared free of foot-and-mouth disease, the ministry said. With effect from March 12, all of Germany apart from a small containment zone around the site of the original case has been declared foot-and-mouth-free, the ministry said.
The move should enable export restrictions on German meat and dairy products to be lifted, said German Agriculture Minister Cem Oezdemir.
“The official confirmation of the WOAH is a decisive basis for our discussions with third countries and will benefit exports,” Oezdemir said. “I am confident that our trade relations for the affected agricultural products around the world will quickly normalise and that our companies will soon be able to supply their usual markets again.”
Measures to contain the disease, which poses no danger to humans, often involve bans on imports of meat and dairy products from affected countries, with Britain, South Korea and Mexico among states imposing import bans on Germany. Some Chinese restrictions have been ended.
Foot-and-mouth disease causes fever and mouth blisters in cloven-hoofed ruminants such as cattle, pigs, sheep and goats. In past decades, farmers and officials have waged major slaughtering campaigns to eradicate the disease.
(Reporting by Michael Hogan in Hamburg; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
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