HAMBURG (Reuters) -Germany’s meat and dairy exports outside the EU face severe restrictions after the country’s first case of the livestock disease foot-and-mouth was confirmed on Friday, the country’s agriculture ministry said.
German authorities confirmed the country’s first outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in nearly 40 years in a herd of water buffalo on the outskirts of Berlin.
Foot-and-mouth disease causes fever and mouth blisters in cloven-hoofed ruminants such as cattle, swine, sheep and goats and in past decades has required major slaughtering campaigns to eradicate. Measures to contain the highly infectious disease, which poses no danger to humans, are being implemented, German authorities said.
The loss of Germany’s status as free from foot-and-mouth disease under World Organisation for Animal Health requirements, means many veterinary certificates for exports outside the EU can no longer be issued, Germany’s federal agriculture ministry said.
Consequently, exports of milk and dairy products, meat and meat products, hides and skins and blood products are “currently hardly possible”, the ministry said, adding that it “assumed third countries would immediately impose bans on such goods from Germany.”
The immediate goal is to ensure the disease does not spread, German agriculture minister Cem Oezdemir said.
German meat exports to the EU were likely to continue because current rules require exports to be stopped only from the region of an EU country directly suffering from a disease, an agriculture ministry spokesperson said separately.
Some countries are restricting imports of German meat including South Korea, the spokesperson said.
Authorities in Berlin and Brandenburg announced a six-day halt to the transport for animals which can transmit the disease while investigations into the cause continue.
The president of the association of German farmers Joachim Rukwied called for urgent and intensive action to prevent the disease spreading and causing more serious financial losses for farmers.
The disease occurs regularly in the Middle East and Africa, in some Asian countries and South America.
(Reporting by Michael Hogan in Hamburg, additional reporting by Christian Kraemer in Berlin, editing by Kirsten Donovan and Christina Fincher)
