Alert for lumpy skin disease outbreak: two farms affected and 400 cattle slaughtered

BarcelonaA second outbreak of lumpy skin disease (LSD), detected this past Monday A recent outbreak on a farm in Peralada (Alt Empordà) has forced the slaughter of all 270 dairy cows. This is the second farm where all livestock has been slaughtered to prevent the spread of the NCD virus. In light of these events, the Catalan government has approved a €4 million package to compensate the affected farmers for their losses while it prepares to begin vaccinating livestock on all farms within a 50-kilometer radius of the first outbreak this Wednesday.

This vaccination campaign will include more than 90,000 head of cattle spread across 700 Catalan farms, as explained by the Catalan Minister of Agriculture, Òscar Ordeig, at a press conference on Tuesday. The government will send the vaccination plan to Brussels this afternoon for approval and the campaign can begin this Wednesday. Furthermore, due to the proximity to the Spanish-French border, the head of the Pyrénées-Orientales department, the regional authority for Northern Catalonia, established a surveillance zone on Monday in 75 northern Catalan municipalities close to the outbreaks in Alt Empordà and will also vaccinate all livestock in this area.

According to the French government, they have enough vaccines to immunize livestock in the region, and in fact, the French Ministry of Agriculture will provide its Spanish counterparts with a batch of vaccines. The DNC has recently expanded to Italy and France—with 143 outbreaks detected between the two countries, according to French authorities—which explains why there are more vaccines in France.

In addition, a new package of vaccines will arrive from the European Union reserves at the end of the week. The Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, said at an event in Vigo (Galicia) that the State currently has 15,000 doses.

The Department of Agriculture of the Generalitat (Catalan Government) expects the vaccination process to take several days and has asked for support from agricultural organizations, veterinary associations, and other entities to speed up the process. Speed of vaccination is key to preventing the spread of the virus, which is highly contagious among cattle.

The first outbreak of the DNC in Catalonia was detected on October 1 on a farm in Castelló d'Empúries (also in the Alt Empordà), where On Saturday all the animals were also sacrificed, in this case 123 calves, to prevent the spread of the virus to other farms. For now, the two outbreaks in the Girona region are the only ones reported in the entire state.

Among other measures to prevent the spread of the virus, the ministry has also restricted the movement of livestock to a 20-kilometer radius of the affected farms.

Rapid compensation

Regarding compensatory measures for livestock farmers affected by the outbreaks, the Catalan government's Department of Agriculture has allocated €4 million to the contingency fund to compensate farms that have had to sacrifice all their livestock. The government and the ministry are considering several methods for calculating compensation, but Ordeig assured that "the most beneficial system" for livestock farmers will be used to minimize their losses.

For approximately a year now, The price of beef is at an all-time high, so the financial losses for the affected farms could be significant.

However, the minister insisted in his appearance before the media that the Catalan government will do "everything possible" to prevent the closure of farms unless it is essential. He also indicated that the government will work to ensure that livestock farmers receive aid quickly, "something that has not been done on other occasions," he insisted. Ordeig said that the speed of the compensation is intended to minimize the disaster that can be caused to livestock farmers by "losing their income" once they have had to slaughter their livestock.