LONDON, Dec 3 (Reuters) – Britain said on Wednesday it would allow pork imports from parts of Spain unaffected by African swine fever (ASF), reversing a blanket ban imposed last week after the country reported its first cases of the disease in more than three decades.<\/p>\n
The move aligns Britain with the European Union’s regionalisation approach, which restricts trade only from outbreak zones.<\/p>\n
The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) said imports from the Barcelona area would remain suspended, while pork from other regions could resume. <\/p>\n
“Following an outbreak of African swine fever in Spain, all fresh pork and other impacted products from the region affected are restricted,” a Defra spokesperson told Reuters in an emailed statement. <\/p>\n
It said that “exports from disease-free areas of Spain can continue as normal”, adding that they would continue to monitor the situation. <\/p>\n
Spain confirmed nine ASF infections in wild boar near Barcelona, prompting emergency measures in Catalonia, a region central to pig farming. The virus does not affect humans but is fatal to pigs and has no vaccine or cure.<\/p>\n
Spain is the EU’s largest pork producer and a major supplier to Britain, shipping 37,600 tonnes of pork so far this year worth over 112 million euros ($130 million). <\/p>\n
The decision comes after Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez urged Britain and other trading partners to continue buying from regions outside the containment zone. <\/p>\n
Spain resumed shipments to China from unaffected regions earlier this week after Beijing narrowed its restrictions to Catalonia.<\/p>\n
Other countries including Mexico and Canada have yet to adopt the same approach as the EU and Britain, and they continue to block pork from across Spain, Spanish officials said. <\/p>\n
A task force of EU vets began work in Barcelona on Tuesday to help contain the outbreak.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Sam Tabahriti and Nigel Hunt; Editing by Catarina Demony)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON, Dec 3 (Reuters) – Britain said on Wednesday it would allow pork imports from parts of Spain…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":609957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5312],"tags":[2000,299,104],"class_list":{"0":"post-609956","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spain","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-spain"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115656826742085534","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609956","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=609956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/609957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}