MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

FAM emergency in Bolivia

The Bolivian Livestock Health Service declared a sanitary emergency in six of the country's nine regions following the confirmed report of outbreaks of foot and mouth disease in two of them.

The FAM emergency was made extensive to Santa Cruz, Tarija, La Paz, Oruro, Cochabamba, Postosí and Chuquisaca, with the outbreaks in these last two.

Bolivia in the heartland of South America also banned imports of all livestock, beef, lamb, pork, dairy and other animal produce from neighbouring Paraguay, where an outbreak has been reported. The ban also includes the northern Argentine provinces of Salta and Formosa, because of the "sanitary risk" given their proximity with the outbreak in Paraguay.

Bolivia with the backing of Mercosur members has been involved for the last two years in a national FAM disease eradication program and so far has managed two regions to the east of the country declared free of FAM.

Mercosur members believe that unless FAM is eliminated from the cattle roaming in the plains of Bolivia, the disease will continue to be endemic, occasionally spreading to its neighbours with disastrous consequences as happened in 2001.