Losses from sheep pox exceeded 350 million euros in 14 months

Economic losses from the spread of small pox successful sheep and goats are estimated astatine much than 350 cardinal euros successful the past 14 months, pursuing the culling of herds passim Greece, said Dimitris Moschos, president of the Hellenic Livestock Association (SEK).

Sheep farmers are successful despair successful Thessaly and Thrace arsenic sheep pox is destroying their flocks, while the authorities are warning of a possible nationwide ban connected the question of animals.

“The Greek livestock manufacture is successful a state of emergency. Delays successful making captious decisions whitethorn pb to losses that will nary longer beryllium reversible. Livestock farmers are calling for enactment now, earlier it is too late,” helium told state-run quality bureau AMNA connected Saturday.

“Livestock farming is nary longer simply astatine a captious crossroads. It has already begun to illness and the illness is accelerating,” helium said, noting that the assemblage has been deed aggregate times successful caller years from various zoonotic diseases. “The situation does not look to end.”

In summation to smallpox, livestock farming is besides under unit from different illnesses: 80,000 animals were culled successful the summertime of 2024 owed to ovine rinderpest (PPR) while different 30,000 were mislaid aft being infected with bluetongue (BT), which Moschos says, is not officially recorded successful the state and has evolved into an endemic disease.

He said livestock farmers bash the vaccinations for bluetongue themselves to support their herds “No 1 comes to assistance us.”

In their view, the lone λύση is to vaccinate livestock, Moschos said. However, the ministry refuses to proceed, citing imaginable interaction connected feta exports, which are valued astatine 78 cardinal euros.

But the European Union has already made it wide that there is nary nationalist wellness concerns, arsenic agelong arsenic the products are pasteurized. “We cannot hazard the [survival] of the full superior assemblage for the sport of feta. The EU has already made it wide that pasteurized products tin circulate freely,” Moschos said.