Livestock

Minister of Rural Development Kostas Tsiaras announced that traditional August 15 festivities will take place without lamb, hinting that slaughterhouses across the country are expected to remain closed next week.

"We will be without lamb on August 15," Tsiaras stated in an interview with Skai TV.

The plague sweeping through Greece's sheep and goats shows that some people were too hasty in replacing the capital lost in last year's disastrous floods.

Such haste is understandable, but when there's no plan and rules, the recovery will be precarious, as is the case now.

In the first 15 days, panic sheep and goat disease hit Thessaly in the laws of Trikala and Larissa. This first experience of dealing with the disease was the “bushel” that the authorities followed when now the plague started to “hit” other areas which in essence emerged from the tracing of Thessaly.

Agriculture Minister Kostas Tsiaras said Thursday that authorities expect more cases of sheep and goat plague in the coming days as animals that came into contact with the virus were found to have traveled to livestock units in 11 of the country's 13 regions. 

Deputy Minister of Rural Development and Food Christos Kellas confirmed on Wednesday that the animals that spread the highly contagious infection plaguing sheep and goats in Greece came from Romania. 

Speaking on ERT radio, he said there are now "serious indications about the country and the way the disease" entered Greece.

Two outbreaks of plague peste des petits ruminants (PPR) of sheep and goats have been detected in Crete, the Creta24.gr website reports.

The detection of sheep and goat plague in Greece has highlighted the inadequacies and shortcomings in the system for monitoring live animal imports, as well as the mechanism of restrictions on sheep and goat farms.

The Ministry of Agricultural Development and Food has decided to extend the ban on the movement and slaughter of small ruminants throughout Greece in an attempt to control the spread of rinderpest - a contagious viral disease affecting cloven-hoofed animals.

The first case of plague in Attica was detected in Aspropyrgos, as confirmed by the Deputy Minister of Rural Development, Christos Kellas, speaking to protothema.gr.

In response to new cases of Peste des Petits Ruminants (PPR) detected outside Thessaly in central Greece, authorities have imposed a nationwide ban on the movement of goats and sheep for breeding, fattening and slaughter.

Over the weekend, a fresh outbreak was confirmed at a livestock unit in Mesino, within the Corinthia regional unit.