Russia bans pork from UK due to flu virus

05 May 2009 09:34:44 GMT
By Aleksandras Budrys MOSCOW, May 5 (Reuters) - Russia has extended its ban on imports of live pigs and raw pork to include the United Kingdom because of fears about the spread of a deadly flu virus, the country's chief veterinarian said on Tuesday. "We have added another European Union country, Great Britain to the banned list," Nikolai Vlasov told a news briefing.
He added that the ban was a formality, as the United Kingdom currently was not exporting pork to Russia because of another ban imposed due to foot-and-mouth disease.
-snip-

He said Russia was well prepared to fight the virus if it appeared inside the country. But, he said, there was a danger that the virus could penetrate to Indonesia and the Central Africa and mutate there with the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of the virus also known as bird flu and trigger a pandemic. "If these two viruses produce an offspring, which will inherit the worst qualities of its ancestors, then we will find ourselves in a very special situation. Currently, nothing bad is happening," Vlasov said.