If classical swine fever doesn’t return, export of meat to the EU to start in a year

On December 15, Serbia stopped vaccinating pigs for classical swine fever, but that is only one step towards having Serbian pork exported to the EU market. This “free status” needs to be maintained over the next year.

The director of the Veterinarian Directorate, Emina Milkara, said this for Tanjug. She added that it was an important segment for the export of pork to the European market, but that Serbia would also have to realize a range of other measures as well.

– The measures after the vaccination stops are important to us, namely, monitoring, supervision of domesticated and wild pigs, farm control and the tagging of pigs. Also, each death and miscarriage need to be reported and examined – Milakara said.

She therefore appealed to all the producers from Serbia not to avoid registering deaths.

According to her, if no new occurrences of the classical swine fever are registered within a year, Serbia will apply for the “free status” and initiate the exporting procedure.

She believes that the disease will not return, because, as she says, the monitoring that has been going on since 2009 is showing good results, based on which the decision to stop vaccinating the pigs was made in the first place, Milakara reminded.

However, if new hotspots appear in Serbia, she says that Serbia will notify the European Commission of this and that the EC will send its team to assess the situation.

– The first measure is the measure of euthanasia, if we’re talking about a farm, or vaccination only where necessary. However, if several hotspots were to appear, we would go back to the previous state – Milakara explained.

If this doesn’t happen, Serbia might start exporting pigs and porkmeat to the European market in a year. The current number of pigs is three million at 76,000 farms.

– If the markets open, the population of pigs will increase, just as was the case with cattle, where the population increased once the markets of Turkey and China opened. For example, we now export beef to China every two days – Milakara said.

Although Serbia does not export porkmeat to the EU market, Milakara says that certain pork products have been exported to that market for years now.

Uprava za veterinu Republika Srbija

Emina Milakara

classical swine fever

vaccination of pigs

porkmeat

export of porkmeat to the EU