The European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, Vytenis Andriukaitis, announced on Monday 15 October in Luxembourg that he had invited the EU Agriculture and Environment Ministers to an informal meeting on African Swine Fever (ASF), to be held in Brussels on 19 December (on the margins of the last Council of the year).
The Commissioner indicated that long-term management measures for the wild boar population will be a central element of this meeting.
He believes that efforts are needed to reduce the density of the wild boar population in areas free of outbreaks of African swine fever and, ideally, in neighbouring countries, "with effective coordination between veterinary services, farmers, forest management agencies and hunters". Vytenis Andriukaitis stressed the need to put in place biosecurity measures and comply with existing European legislation.
The Commissioner had a bilateral meeting with Czech Minister Miroslav Toman to discuss the Czech measures envisioned, but finally suspended, which provided for additional tests to be applied to meat deliveries from several EU countries affected by the disease.
These unilateral measures are "not smart", as they could have unnecessarily disrupted EU trade, undermined the single market and sent the wrong message to trading partners that "our regionalisation system is not working".
At the ‘Agriculture’ Council on Monday, nearly twenty delegations took the floor (Poland, Czech Republic, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Estonia, etc.). Italy and Poland, in particular, stated that unilateral measures were "unjustified and discriminatory".
Belgium was congratulated by neighbouring countries for its rapid response to the cases found on wild boars in the Ardennes. Denmark and France have called for a new scientific analysis on the spread of the disease through hay and straw.
In Belgium, the 63,000 hectare protection perimeter, defined after the detection of the first cases in the south of the province of Luxembourg, has been divided into three distinct zones, each meeting specific requirements. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)