Bonn - More than 77,000 pigs are to be slaughtered in western and north-eastern Germany following one of the worst ever epidemics of swine fever in the Mecklenburg-western Pomerania region, officials said yesterday. The outbreak was traced to a pig farm in Losten in the north-east, where the regional agricultural ministry has ordered owners to slaughter all 62,000 pigs.
More than 10 per cent of pigs in the Mecklenburg-western Pomerania region, Europe's main pig-breeding area, have been infected, a ministry spokesman said. Cases were also reported in northern Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein, where 3,000 pigs were ordered killed, and in the western region of NorthRhine/Westphalia, were 12,000 are to be slaughtered.