Russia says multiple cattle illnesses are complicating Siberian outbreak

By Gleb Bryanski

MOSCOW, March 20 (Reuters) - Russian authorities said on Friday "other diseases" were complicating an outbreak of cattle illness that has led to mass culling in Siberia, which they have blamed on pasteurellosis and rabies.

The culling of thousands of animals has sparked rare protests in wartime Russia and prompted calls by farmers for the resignation of top government officials overseeing agriculture.

"The veterinary services found it difficult to implement such unpopular measures," Sergei Dankvert, head of the government commission investigating the outbreak, said in an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.

"However, this concerns an outbreak of a dangerous infectious disease, pasteurellosis, complicated by other illnesses, and incurable rabies," he said, without specifying what the other illnesses were.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agriculture Service (FAS) in a report published on Friday cited "local sources and trading contacts" who alleged that "the scale of these measures may indicate an unconfirmed outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease."

It added that the authorities' response to the outbreak "raised concerns about the adequacy of current vaccines and the potential impact on Russia's cattle trade".

Russia obtained recognition from the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) in 2025 as a foot-and-mouth-free territory. The highly contagious viral disease usually requires mass culling, and any confirmation of its presence could have a massive impact on Russian agricultural exports, which President Vladimir Putin has ordered officials to increase by 50% by 2030.

The FAS also published an official Russian document dated February 25 that indicated a ban on all livestock exports from 15 affected regions in Siberia and central Russia was in place.

The Novosibirsk region of Siberia declared a state of emergency to tackle the outbreak earlier this week, and officials attributed it to pasteurellosis - a severe bacterial pneumonia - and rabies.

The Russian agriculture watchdog agency told Reuters that allegations in the USDA report "were not true" and emphasized the importance of relying on reports by WOAH rather than "claims from anonymous sources."

It stressed that planned vaccinations of animals against foot-and-mouth disease have been conducted in the Novosibirsk region since 2022 and are routinely monitored by the watchdog.

In a separate statement to Reuters, the Agriculture Ministry added that Russia reports all cases of diseases requiring such reporting to WOAH.

Both the ministry and the watchdog said that the ongoing vaccinations against foot-and-mouth disease in neighbouring Kazakhstan are not related to outbreaks of pasteurellosis in Russia.

Culls continued on Friday in the village of Kozikha, 70 km (45 miles) southwest of Novosibirsk, according to witness accounts and multiple videos from the area.

One of the most prominent protesters, Svetlana Panina, who lost 150 head of cattle in the culling, posted a video saying she had been briefly detained for questioning as a witness in a case involving an arson attack at an animal burial site.

Dankvert said laboratory tests showed the pasteurellosis involved in the original outbreak had mutated and started to behave more aggressively than usual.

"In such a situation, the only way to stop the spread is the rapid removal and destruction of sick and suspect animals, as is done worldwide," he said.