Sheep farmers devastated by sheep pox outbreak as flocks culled

Vagelis Karajiolis, 40, a stockbreeder, looks astatine his sheep arsenic a sheep pox spreads crossed Greece, successful the village of Armenio, successful Thessaly, Thursday. [Alexandros Avramidis/Reuters]

Sheep farmers are successful despair successful cardinal Greece arsenic sheep pox destroys their flocks, while the authorities are warning of a imaginable nationwide prohibition connected the question of animals.

The outbreak of the highly infectious virus successful the state is threatening to thrust up nutrient prices and impact the accumulation of feta.

Giorgos Tasioulis, warring backmost tears, stands successful beforehand of his bare sheep sheds.

“Our unit … is present backmost to zero, our household is backmost to zero,” the 45-year-old begetter of three says. Just weeks earlier, each 900 of his sheep were culled and buried lone meters from his workplace successful Kileler municipality.

Tasioulis had invested astir €2 cardinal since 2020 to modernize his breeding unit. Now it is silent.

Across Thessaly, the country’s cultivation heartland, sheep pox is wiping retired flocks. More than 260,000 sheep and goats – astir 2% of the nationalist herd – person been culled successful the past 12 months, forcing 1,100 farms to unopen down, based connected authorities figures.

Kileler was deed hardest, with 40,000 animals gone and 80 breeding units closed since July.

“The situation is an implicit disaster,” Tasioulis says.

A fewer kilometers away, different breeder Vangelis Karajiolis is still holding on, but barely.

“Every greeting I wonder what we will find astatine the farm, if there will beryllium an infection,” helium said, “We can’t sleep astatine night.”

Thessaly produces 15% of Greece’s sheep and goat nutrient and astir a third of its beverage and feta cheese. But the portion has been battered. In 2023, storm Daniel, opens caller tab flooded immense parts of the plain, destroying crops and sidesplitting livestock.

“When we thought we had recovered a bit, the sheep pox came and finished us off,” Karajiolis said.

Authorities person launched a 10-day exigency plan, sending veterinarians to farms and mounting up disinfection zones. But this came too precocious for galore farmers.

“Unfortunately, astatine that clip the tough measures that should person been taken were not implemented,” says Dimitris Baloukas, caput of the Breeders Federation of Thessaly.

Rural Development and Food Minister Kostas Tsiaras urged farmers not to fell infections. “Responsibility is needed from each those progressive arsenic our livestock is astatine risk,” helium said earlier connected Friday speaking connected nationalist broadcaster ERT.

“Because of the pox, they killed each the sheep,” said 80-year-old cheesemaker Nikos Karakanas, looking astatine his bare beverage tanks. “I had 10 employees, present I person none,” helium said. [Reuters]