Saturday, 9 May 2009Russia's animal and plant health watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor said Russia has lifted from 6 U.S. states a ban on raw pork imports imposed due to flu virus but added two new states to the banned list.
A daily report of the flu spread showed that it had excluded from Zone 2, to which a ban on imports of raw pork applies, the states of Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, New Jersey and Ohio. It added the state of Massachusetts to the list. In the United States, now only Massachusetts and Arizona belong to Zone 2. The zone also includes the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Nova Scotia and Ontario as well as the United Kingdom and Spain.
Rosselkhoznadzor also added Delaware to the list of U.S. states from which imports of all meat and meat products are banned, so-called Zone 1.
Besides Delaware, Zone 1 also includes the states of California, New York, South Carolina and Texas, as well as Mexico, where the outbreak started, and countries of Central America and the Caribbean.
Moreover, Russia has extended its import ban on live pigs and raw pork to include Britain because of fears about the spread of a deadly flu virus, the country's chief veterinarian said Tuesday, drawing condemnation from the EU.
Nikolai Vlasov, chief of the Agriculture Ministry's animal and plant health watchdog, told reporters that the ban was a formality, as Britain was not selling pork to Russia because of an earlier ban over foot-and-mouth disease.
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Saturday, 9 May 2009
by Simge Soyer, JTW
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