At the moment, there are some 180 outbreaks of African swine fever in Romania, mostly in the north-west and south-east
In the last few weeks, over 140,000 pigs have been killed in Romania, pigs contaminated by the African swine fever, an illness that is hard to check as there are no cures. Furthermore, the virus does not develop antibodies and so, no vaccines can be made.
At the moment, there are about 4.5 million pigs in Romania, as Minister of Agriculture Petre Daea said, and one quarter of the country's counties are affected by the ASF virus, but not entirely. There are areas where the virus has been identified only in one household and other areas where it has infected big farms with tens of thousands of pigs or even one hundred thousand pigs.
The euthanasia of pigs has been decided in all cases. The most dramatic case has been reported in Braila County in the south-east, where there is the biggest pig farm in Romania and the second largest in Europe; 140,000 pigs at the afore-mentioned farm have been gassed and buried, a process estimated to last about one month.
The population should know that there is no other way to deal with the African swine fever but euthanasia, no matter how painful that might be, the Minister made it clear, adding that measures would further be taken to curb the extension of the virus. The sale of pork has been banned in markets and road disinfection filters have been put in place at the entry of counties where outbreaks have been reported.
Minister Daea went on to say that Romania had asked Brussels for help to fight the African swine fever and 12 states have offered support to Romania, a country, which according to Petre Daea, has taken preventive measures against that virus for 5 years now.
However, the right wing opposition and President Klaus Iohannis accuse the Social-Democrat-ALDE government of faulty management of the situation saying that many farmers risk going bankrupt. Former prime minister Dacian Ciolos points to an extremely serious crisis that might destroy the entire pig farming sector in Romania and trigger the laying off of thousands of employees in that sector.
Dacian Ciolos says that when he was minister of agriculture in Romania or European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development he was confronted with such situations. At that time, it was proved that things could be kept under control if action was taken in due time. Last but not least, he warned that pork exports risked being stopped for a while which would have significant follow-ups, including the growth of the inflation rate.
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