Since February, an epizootic disease with an unclear origin has been ravaging the Russian countryside. Farmers have seen tens of thousands of animals placed in quarantine, seized, slaughtered, and then incinerated by veterinarians, who were escorted by the police.
The independent Russian media specializing in environmental issues, Kedr, has put forward a figure of at least 90,500 affected cattle due to these “sanitary measures.” However, in the villages, the uncertainty about the disease causing this situation fuels the anger of the residents.
“Without any explanation, they come and seize the cattle. They only show decrees from the governor and do not even communicate the results of laboratory tests to us,” says Andrei Kouzmin, a lawyer in the Samara region, in Forbes Russia. “Sometimes the livestock has been eliminated in the absence of the owner or seized by force with the help of the police,” adds Novaya Gazeta Europe. Authorities most often cite pasteurellosis, sometimes rabies. An explanation that, in the pages of Kedr, leaves several veterinarians puzzled. Pasteurellosis is a known infection that is generally treated with isolation and antibiotics, not by the elimination of entire herds.
In the Novosibirsk region.
