PARIS (Reuters) -France has reported a sharp decline in outbreaks of an illness in cows called lumpy skin disease, with no new cases since August 22, after launching a mass vaccination campaign around the outbreaks, the agriculture ministry said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Lumpy skin disease, a viral disease transmitted by insect bites, causes blisters and lowers milk production in cattle. It does not pose a risk to humans but often leads to trade bans and economic losses.<\/p>\n
It is widespread in North Africa and was also detected in Italy in late June.<\/p>\n
The number of new outbreaks in France fell from around 10 per week in July and early August to just two per week recently, ministry officials said. A total of 77 outbreaks have now been confirmed since late June, mostly in the eastern departments of Savoie and Haute-Savoie, and more recently in neighbouring Ain.<\/p>\n
As of late August, the vaccination campaign has seen over 220,000 animals vaccinated, accounting for more than 90% of cattle in the zones around the outbreaks, and 1,700 cattle have been killed, the ministry said.<\/p>\n
France’s national cattle herd numbers about 17 million, the largest in the European Union.<\/p>\n
Britain and other countries have banned imports of raw milk cheese from France due to the outbreaks, French dairy producers said.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Sybille de La Hamaide; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PARIS (Reuters) -France has reported a sharp decline in outbreaks of an illness in cows called lumpy skin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2000,299,36,132483,132485,34059,132484],"class_list":{"0":"post-380842","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-france","11":"tag-lumpy-skin-disease","12":"tag-mass-vaccination","13":"tag-outbreaks","14":"tag-vaccination-campaign"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115108035041751146","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}