Food Safety Agency Begins Checks on the Private Pig Farms Due to ASF

From today, employees of the Food Safety Agency will begin checks on the private farms of people in the 20-kilometer surveillance zone. The aim is to determine whether farmers have voluntarily killed their domestic pigs.

The deadline expired on Friday. In the Plovdiv region the villages around the Industrial Zone of Rakovski, Stryama and Belozem will be checked first.

If the owners have not complied with the agency's prescriptions, the veterinary authorities will initiate involuntary animal euthanasia.

As of today, the access of tourists to the Zdravets hut is also forbidden, in order to avoid the possibility of spreading the infection. The euthanasia of 8,000 pigs from the pig farm in the Silistra village of Vetren is expected to begin today.

So far, 30 outbreaks of infection have been established in domestic animals and 27 in wild pigs. The African swine fever in the three pig farms in Russe is about to wipe out 20% of the industrially reared pigs in Bulgaria.