The National Assembly is holding a hearing of Minister of Agriculture and Food Georgi Tahov and Bulgarian Food Safety Director Svetlozar Patarinski over the sheep plague outbreak in Velingrad.

• The laboratory in Montpellier confirms the presence of sheep and goat plague in Velingrad
• Parliament sets up ad hoc committees on drought and small ruminant disease

The hearings are taking place at the request of Andrey Vhorbanov and a group of MPs from There Is Such a People (ITN) in connection with all information regarding the health status of the five flocks in the region of Pazardshik, after circulating doubts regarding the samples sent to the reference laboratory in Montpellier. 

During the hearing, Minister Tahov said that the European Commission had already put a ban on the movement of animals and products from them from the region of Pazardzhik due to the reports of sheep plague in 5 farms in Velingrad, submitted by the Bulgarian Food Safety Agency to the EC. An EC team has been in Bulgaria since yesterday to establish the state the sheep are in and to examine the circumstances of the outbreak of the disease. Parallel with this, the investigation of the Regional Food Safety Agency-Pazardzhik, ordered by the director of the Bulgarian Food Safety Agency, continues.
Meanwhile, the Sofia Administrative Court has ruled the halting of the euthanizing of the animals in questrion pending an appeal.