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Lukashenka calls for calm over African swine fever

 

Alyaksandr Lukashenka on Friday urged the public not to panic over the spread of the African swine fever virus.

Speaking to reporters in Minsk, he said that the virus had been imported from another country. "I don’t want to accuse anyone, but wherever the trouble came from, it is evidence that the world is closely interlinked and we will have to fight that," the government's news agency BelTA quoted him as saying.

Mr. Lukashenka said that authorities focused on preventing the spread of the highly contagious disease by hogs kept by households. "We will put things in order at hog farms, it is easier," he said. According to him, authorities offer decent compensation to households for culling their hogs.

He stressed that hog farms and households should use domestic feedstuff while imported compound feed should be thoroughly tested.

Belarus has an efficient system to prevent contaminated meat from getting to stores and markets, he said, adding that the Committee for State Security and prosecutor's offices had been tasked with monitoring authorities' response to the spread of the virus.

Even the West has acknowledged that Belarus is efficiently tackling the problem, Mr. Lukashenka claimed.

He said that he continued eating pork despite the outbreak. "And one should not think that the president has a lot of people who test each piece of his food. We buy certain foodstuffs at the Kamarowski market, just as you do," he was quoted as saying. // BelaPAN