U.S. Department Of Agriculture Says Foot-and-mouth Disease Epidemic In Russia
- 25.03.2026, 22:10
The Russian authorities are trying to cover it up.
The mass seizure and slaughter of livestock in Russian regions, which sparked protests by farmers who lost property and businesses overnight, may be linked to the foot-and-mouth disease epidemic, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) says.
Although authorities attributed what is happening to pasteurellosis or rabies, "local sources as well as trade contacts indicate that the scale of the measures taken may indicate an unconfirmed outbreak of FMD," the USDA said in a report.
In addition to slaughtering cattle in Siberian regions, strict quarantine measures, including cordons and travel bans, are being imposed. And this is atypical for pasteurellosis, which is usually fought with quarantine and medicines, the U.S. Department of Agriculture writes.
A foot-and-mouth disease epidemic has indeed begun in Russia, a source confirmed to "Novaya Gazeta. Europe" a source in a large agricultural holding company that operates in the Novosibirsk region. According to him, problems arose back in February: clinical signs of foot-and-mouth disease were detected in animals, and later they were confirmed by the veterinary service. As a result, large farms were forced to destroy livestock, and did it before the problem affected small farmers.
"We didn't want to kill anyone either. But then we found out that the contamination went beyond the region. And it went very quickly. Unfortunately, there is only one way to deal with this disease so far: complete liquidation and burning of the center," the source tells Nova.Europa.
According to him, the authorities are hiding the foot-and-mouth disease epidemic because Russia has recently - in May 2025 - received the status of a country free of the disease. As a member of the WTO, Russia is obliged to report confirmed cases of foot-and-mouth disease in domestic animals, and from that moment it loses its status, and other states can ban imports of meat and dairy products from it.
"Initially they wanted to do everything as quietly as possible, so that the fire would be small and no one would notice anything," says the interlocutor of "Nova-Europe". - Nobody expected such a scale."
The Novosibirsk Region government said earlier that a total of 176 farms in the region would be seized of livestock. According to the local Ministry of Agriculture, a total of five districts in the region have been identified outbreaks of "pasteurellosis" since the beginning of February. The regional veterinary department noted that the disease has become incurable due to the "variability of the pathogen".