Another 130 cows from the Bulgaria's Burgas district will be killed after they were found positive for FMD. Photo by BGNES
A new outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) has been found in the village of Granichar, in the Burgas district, experts from the Bulgarian Food Safety Agency announced Thursday.
Six out of seven samples have given positive results for FMD during routine checks of all 130 animals in the village. They were owned by one farmed and will be killed as soon as possible.
On March 20, a day before the European Commission was expected to lift the measures, imposed on the Burgas district because of previous FMD cases, a new outbreak was found at a private farm near the village of Kirovo, close to the border with Turkey.
Cases of FMD appeared in Bulgaria at the beginning of the year and were believed to have been transmitted from wild animals coming from Turkey. There have been five outbreaks of the disease, all in the Burgas district.
On Wednesday, Bulgaria's Agriculture Minister Miroslav Naydenov said that the idea for restoring the fence along the Bulgarian-Turkish border as a measure against the spread of FMD is not on the agenda anymore.
In his words, the EC is expected to intervene in Turkey, where there are more than 1000 FMD outbreaks.
"The EC agreed to provide additional EUR 1.5-2 M to Bulgaria for monitoring of the border with Turkey and for carrying out additional maintenance," Naydenov said.