"It is essential to establish a sanitary cordon around the infected area with sweeping checks on the companies in the area ", but also "a tight control throughout the island between ungulates and farmed animals essential to have a real picture of the situation".

Paolo Mele, president of Confagricoltura Sardegna, spoke on the “deer disease” , the first European outbreak of the Ehd virus ( WHAT IS IT ) which has affected cattle and sheep in Sardinia with repercussions on thousands of regional livestock farms.

"It would be important to collect as much data as possible from the wild with a series of passive surveillance activities in search of carcasses to be analyzed in the laboratory, to be carried out with the staff of the Forestry Corps of Environmental Supervision and the Forestas Agency, in the macro-areas in which they find deer and fallow deer, which are also susceptible to contagion ", he explains, asking the Region to convene a technical table " with the agricultural sector organizations, the territorial ASL, the experimental zooprophylactic institute of Sardinia, the universities of the island and the numerous centers of research of the rest of the country. A regional crisis cabinet, in short, which operates in close contact with the Ministry of Health ".

"In a few weeks we managed to collect all the worst animal health emergencies in the EU : from serotype 3 of Blue tongue in the sheep sector, on which there are no vaccines, to the first case of haemorrhagic disease of deer in Europe, which also leads to death of cattle and in which sheep are carriers of the virus, passing through the avian landed in the colony of different bird species in the city park of Monte Urpinu in Cagliari - observes Mele - A level of red alert that sees Sardinia under the lens of enlargement of international animal health. A potentially devastating picture that risks putting the sheep and cattle sector on the ground permanently ".

(Unioneonline / D)

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