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Authorities ban pork exports from Vitsyebsk region over outbreak of unnamed infection

 

The agriculture ministry on Monday introduced a temporary ban on exports of live hogs and pork from the Vitsyebsk region due to an outbreak of an infectious animal disease at the Luchesa hog farm.

The ministry did not name the disease in the directive.

Earlier this week, police set up roadblocks around the hog farm near Vitsyebsk, raising suspicions of an infection outbreak.

Local residents claimed that all of the farm's hogs were to be culled after cases of African swine fever had been detected there. Police officers guarding entrances to the farm refused to either confirm or deny the rumors.

On June 21, the Belarusian State Veterinary Center said that a hog in a village in the Iwye district, Hrodna region, had been found to have succumbed to African swine fever. The hog belonged to a village resident.

Veterinary experts have linked the case to contaminated feeds imported from an unnamed country.

Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania and Poland have already banned imports of pork from Belarus. //BelaPAN