Moscow - The head of Russia's Federal Veterinary and Phytosanitary Oversight Service (Rosselkhoznadzor) and his counterparts from Belarus and Ukraine will get together to discuss measures for combating African swine fever (ASF).
Rosselkhoznadzor said that the meeting will take place in Minsk on Thursday. In attendance will be the head of the International Epizootic Bureau’s office for Eastern Europe, Kazimiras Lukauskas, and the vice president of the bureau’s regional commission for Europe, Ivan Bisiuk.
Russia has seen ASF spike in recent weeks. The virus has also made it into Belarus, where two outbreaks of the disease were discovered this month. The transmission agent is said to have been hog-feed from Russia.
Russian Federal Veterinarian and Phytosanitary Oversight Service head Sergei Dankvert told Interfax that Jonas Milius, chief of the State Food and Veterinary Service of Lithuania, the chair country of the European Union, would be amongst the participants of the meeting.
“We will speak about African swine fever as a common problem from which neither Europe nor Asia is immune. We need to create a joint protocol for handling this danger,” Dankvert said. The primary objective is the development of an ASF vaccine, he added.
