Agriculture Minister Cem Oezdemir had announced on Wednesday that Germany has not found any further cases of foot-and-mouth disease.
According to him, experts are working tirelessly to identify the source of the country’s first outbreak of the disease in decades.
“The most important task now is to ensure that we get this disease under control,” Oezdemir had said during a press conference in Berlin.
The government is also striving to keep export markets open for German meat and dairy products, particularly within the European Union. This effort according Oezdemir, depends on the absence of new cases.
Germany reported its first outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in almost 40 years on January 10, in a herd of water buffalo near Berlin in the Brandenburg region.
Foot-and-mouth disease affects cloven-hoofed animals such as cattle, pigs, sheep, and goats. Historically, eradicating the disease required extensive slaughtering campaigns. Containment measures for this highly infectious disease, which poses no threat to humans, often include bans on meat and dairy imports from affected countries. This week, Britain, South Korea, and Mexico imposed import bans on German products.
On Wednesday, the German government announced that the European Commission had approved Germany’s quarantine measures, which include a 10-kilometer (6.21 miles) zone around the affected farm. This approval allows for the “rationalization” trade principle, restricting imports of meat and dairy products only from the affected region rather than the entire country.
“We have now managed, thank God, to reach the first step of an agreement with the European Union and make it clear that rationalization applies,” Oezdemir told reporters. “But the precondition is that we do not have any more cases of foot-and-mouth disease.”
German authorities continue to work around the clock to trace the source of the outbreak and determine how the infection entered the country, the minister concluded.
