Page 288 of articles about health

Germany's dioxin scare spread as 934 farms in four states were closed after receiving dioxin-laced animal feed.

In the last nine to ten months Turkey has reported over 1,100 outbreaks of FMD in all regions on the Asian (Anatolia) side of the country, many of them identified as FMD strain O.

Belarus has imposed a ban on the import of pork from Leningrad Oblast of Russia after an outbreak of African swine fever in the region.

South Korea has ordered the culling of 1.34 million livestock since late November to stem its severest foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) outbreak in history, the government said Monday.

On January 2, the Polish Ministry of Agriculture announced its intent to create a joint Food and Veterinary Inspection Service by January 1, 2012.

The Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM) is aware that there is a likelihood of a shortage of the injectable drug, iron dextran, for the prevention and treatment of iron deficiency in baby pigs.

High levels of dioxin were found in pigs early on Tuesday at a farm in the county of Verden, Lower Saxony, officials said.

China’s central government will invest more to improve county-level quality inspection centers to ensure food hygiene over the next five years.

264 audits are planned for the 2011 programme, corresponding to roughly 4,800 auditor days on the ground, travel time excluded.

Bulgaria has updated the European Commission with more information on the outbreak of FMD in Burgas region.

In light of the comments received Ministers have decided to proceed with the proposal for a compulsory registration scheme in the 2011 Regulations. The scheme will come into force one year from the date of the VMR coming into force. It will not cover sales of AVM-GSL medicines. Further information relating to the scheme will be made available on the VMD website as it becomes available.

As of Tuesday, the foot-and-mouth epidemic has stricken 15 northern and central provinces of Vietnam.

The Korean government says it halted all imports of pork and poultry from Germany on Saturday after tests results showed high levels of cancer causing dioxin in animal feed. Meanwhile, Russia has announced it is tightening restrictions on meats imported from Germany.

The Russia Authorities have informed the European Union of a suspected case of African Swine Fever in Leningrad region (St Petersburg), near the EU border. Disease has been preliminarily confirmed by laboratory tests.

The incident started with the mixing of fatty acids, meant to be used for technical purposes (such as paper processing), with vegetable feed fat, which is used in the production of compound feed for animals. The fatty acids were contaminated with dioxins, and that is how the dioxins ended up in compound feed. The actual source of the dioxin contamination –i.e. why dioxins were present in the fatty acids– remains unknown for the time being.