OREANDA-NEWS. August 08, 2012. The sanitary and veterinary authorities of Moldova have banned the import of pork from Ukraine, after a hotbed of African swine plague had been discovered in the Zaporizhia region from eastern Ukraine, Agriculture Minister Vasile Bumacov told.

"Ukraine informed about this disease on 1 August. The interdictions are applied only to the production from Zaporizhia, and will be lifted only after the hotbed of swine plague is liquidated," Bumacov stressed.

The virus poses particular danger for the pig-breeding branch of Moldova, as well as for the private households and the farmers who produce pork. The prohibitions to the import of pork from Russia, imposed in 2011, are in force too. It is presumed that the African swine plague found out in Ukraine was brought from Russia.

"We informed the Interior Ministry (MAI), Customs Service and the Moldsilva agency about the actions undertaken to suppress the entrance of the African swine plague in Moldova," the Agriculture Ministry's Sanitary and Veterinary Agency for Safety of Animal Origin Goods said. Moldova has eight veterinary laboratories where all the imported production is tested.

The hotbed of swine plague was discovered in the Kamishevatka village, Primorsk district of the Zaporizhia region, where five animals perished, and another 250 were slaughtered. The other five regions of Ukraine are in the risk zone: Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Sumy and Kharkiv. Russia has been desperately trying to liquidate the hotbeds of African swine plague starting from 2007. Over the past five years, more than 500,000 animals have been slaughtered, and the compensations amounted to 53 million dollars.