Health News
Hundreds of Russian pigs to be slaughtered for African Pig Plague
Dec 7, 2010, 17:53 GMT
Kiev/Moscow - Health authorities in Russia's southern Kuban region will slaughter hundreds of pigs possibly infected with African Pig Plague, the Interfax news agency reported Tuesday.
Health experts do not believe African Pig Plague to be dangerous to humans, but pigs and pork infected with the disease are not safe for human consumption.
Health inspectors detected presence of the disease in early December, and authorities have placed a five-kilometre quarantine zone around a farm found to contain six infected animals, said Igor Tsokur, an Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman.
The destruction of 904 animals at the swine farm near the village Staroshcherbinskiy is necessary to prevent the spread of the disease, Tsokur said.
The last outbreak of pig plague in the area was registered in November, at another Kuban province farm. Health officials destroyed more than 5,000 animals.
Pig Plague is also known as classical swine fever or hog cholera. African Pig Plague is a strain of the disease thought to have first appeared in the Caucasus region 5 t0 6 years ago, since then spreading to Armenia, Georgia, Russia, and Ukraine.
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