HAMBURG (Reuters) – Germany’s agriculture ministry said on Wednesday it expects meat and dairy product exports to the European Union to continue despite a case of the foot-and-mouth disease affecting livestock being confirmed last week.
German authorities confirmed the country’s first outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in nearly 40 years on Friday in a herd of water buffalo on the outskirts of Berlin in the Brandenburg region.
Foot-and-mouth disease hits cloven-hoofed ruminants including cattle, pigs, sheep and goats and in past decades needed major slaughtering campaigns to eradicate. Measures to contain the highly infectious disease, which poses no danger to humans, often involve bans on imports of meat and dairy products from affected countries, with Britain, South Korea and Mexico among countries imposing import bans on Germany this week.
Germany’s government warned even one case could bring the country’s meat and dairy exports outside the EU to a standstill.
But the agriculture ministry said on Wednesday it had been informed the European Union Commission had decided Germany’s action to impose quarantine zones of around 10 kilometres (6.21 miles) around the farm where foot-and-mouth was discovered is sufficient to permit the use of the “rationalisation” trade principle.
Under this EU rule, imports of meat and dairy products are only restricted from the region where the disease has been confirmed and not from the whole of the affected country.
German agriculture minister Cem Oezdemir said: “After the news last week, the decision from Brussels is a ray of light for farmers.”
“The Commission has not expanded the quarantine area imposed in Brandenburg. Meat and dairy products which are produced outside the quarantine area can still be sold in the EU.”
Germany’s meat exports, mainly pork, have been concentrated on the EU after many countries banned imports after the disease swine fever was discovered in 2020.
Germany said on Tuesday it had found no new foot-and-mouth cases following intensive testing around the area around the first case.
(Reporting by Michael Hogan, Editing by Louise Heavens)
