Bulgaria Opens National Headquarters for Bird Flu Fight
Mon 17 October 2005 8:29
A national headquarters for bird flu prevention and fight will be opened in Bulgaria on Monday.
Bulgarian experts have been testing samples from three dead birds found in different areas of the Pleven region, about 100km from Bulgaria's Danube river border with Romania.
Fears about a Bulgarian outbreak have so far proved unfounded as no virus has been found.
Bulgaria launched precautionary measures following the confirmation of bird flu cases in the country's neighbors. It tightened border controls in a bid to stop the spread of bird flu, banned the imports of poultry from Turkey and Romania , but no crisis headquarters was immediately established.
Bulgaria's National Veterinary Medical Service announced Saturday it will purchase some 1,000 packs of the medicine Tamiflu.
Meanwhile lab tests in the United Kingdom proved that the bird virus strain found in Romania is deadly to humans. Romania's agriculture minister said the strain is H5N1 highly pathogenic virus, the same lethal version as the one responsible for more than 60 deaths in Asia.
Earlier in the week Turkey also confirmed the bird virus was the H5N1 strain.
Bulgaria's Food Industry Aims at European Standards
Business: 28 October 2004, Thursday.
The first of a series of seminars, designed to bring Bulgarian entrepreneurs closer to European standards, took place in Sofia on Thursday.
The seminar focused on Bulgaria's food industry ahead of the country's EU accession, ways to compete on the common market after the scheduled entry, the introduction of the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) system.
The food safety system HACCP is a pro-active process control system by which food quality is ensured. The forum encompassed the whole process of introducing the quality system - regulations in the new legislation, high quality output and hygiene practices, preparations and consultancy, certification methods.
Bulgaria's food industry competitiveness faces serious challenges. That is the reason why we decided to initiate a series of training seminars on safe and quality output, said Anguel Saparevski, CEO of ADS Private Company.
Skantek OOD, authorised distributor of TORK hygiene products, and ADS Private Company consultancy are organizers of the event, which took place with the participation of the Health and Agriculture Ministry.
Experts: There is No Mad Cow in Bulgaria
Politics: 22 October 2004, Friday.
No cases of Mad Cow disease were found in Bulgaria, officials from the National Veterinary Service announced Friday.
Besides the daily control for disease prevention, every year experts from the National Veterinary Service analyze the results of the "Mad Cow" program in accordance with the EU diagnostics standards, the experts assure.
The statement comes a day after agriculture MPs from Bulgarian Parliament announced that no certificates for the beef and veal were issued since July 2004 to prove the harmlessness of the meat.
The MPs alarmed that there is a danger for people to be infected with the Mad Cow disease, since the meat had not been tested.
Bulgaria Opens Mad Cow Lab
Politics: 16 May 2005, Monday.
A laboratory for the research of mad cow disease has opened doors in the city of Veliko Tarnovo, to the north of Bulgaria.
The new center is designed to carry out diagnostics of infected cattle in the area of North East Bulgaria. The laboratory has an equipment worth of EUR 250,000 financed under the PHARE program as well as two doctors and two nurses, Bulgarian National Radio informed.
Bulgaria does not have any mad cow record so far, but a scandal raged in August last year over an illegally imported mad cow disease test.
The Netherlands diagnosed its first known case of the human form of "mad cow disease" - known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) - earlier in April.
vCJD is thought to be caused by eating beef products from cows infected with mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) as it is properly called.
Tissue close to the animal's nervous system is especially dangerous.
