Panayiotis Rougalas
One could reasonably say the ink has already dried on the Covid-19 crisis. Yet the lessons from it should by now have become second nature to us.
Foot-and-mouth disease affects only cloven-hoofed animals, namely cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs. The state’s veterinary services assure the public that the virus does not transmit to humans in any way, including through food consumption. Animals infected with the virus experience a dramatic drop in milk production, young animals fail to develop properly, and reproductive capacity becomes more difficult. As a result, the culling of all animals in affected units is unavoidable in order to stop the outbreak and protect the remaining farms.
Now to the first million-dollar question: Will livestock farmers be compensated? According to the veterinary services, yes, just as happened during the Covid-19 crisis when economies shut down and affected parties received compensation. Farmers who comply with biosecurity measures will be fully and promptly reimbursed at current market prices. But will the cost to farmers be limited only to the animals, the hay, and whatever else is directly affected? Certainly not. Reputational risk is not easily priced, and the phrase foot-and-mouth disease will, for a reasonable period, be associated with Cypriot meat, even though the focal point has been identified in Livadia and Voroklini.
The second million-dollar question: Will there be repercussions for the economy and for consumers? Although it is too early for firm predictions, there will certainly be consequences, just as there were with the coronavirus when no one knew their full extent. This time, the economic impact will follow the basic rule of supply and demand. Depending on the shortages that emerge in meat and milk, corresponding price increases should be expected. Alarmism at this stage serves no purpose, nor should we rush to declare economic damage of an unverifiable scale, because we do not yet know what the supply of milk and meat will look like or how demand will evolve.
More checks
And the third million-dollar question: What made us believe the disease would remain confined to the occupied areas? It was known that animals there were suffering from this disease. Did anyone in the state and the competent services truly believe it would not cross into the free areas? It was only a matter of time. Can such a long stretch really be monitored effectively only through crossing points? This is reminiscent of January 2020, when it was argued that Covid-19 would not easily reach Cyprus because it is an island and geographically isolated. The real issue is how prepared the state was to manage such a crisis, and whether it had intensified inspections at livestock units and other procedures that might have allowed the potential problem to be detected sooner.
Individual responsibility
As the Veterinary Services reported, the first call notifying them of the disease came on February 19, 2026, from a livestock farmer in Livadia, Larnaca, who reported symptoms consistent with foot-and-mouth disease. On February 20, following the announcement of the Livadia incident, two operations in the Voroklini livestock area informed the Veterinary Services that their animals had shown symptoms for several days, which their private veterinarian had attributed to gangrenous mastitis. Laboratory results on February 21, 2026, indicated that the virus had entered those operations roughly two weeks earlier without being reported.
And now we turn to the individual, not the state. From the outset of Covid-19, governments made constant appeals for the adoption of personal responsibility measures. At the time, there was understandably pushback because governments were trying to shift certain missteps, which could generously be described as mediocre, onto the convenient catch-all of individual responsibility while wagging a finger at citizens. Personal responsibility measures were indeed necessary, but not everything could be pinned on that phrase.
In the case of foot-and-mouth disease in the free areas, however, livestock farmers with sick animals should have informed the Services earlier. Were they waiting for the first case to explode before coming forward? Responsibility is not only collective. It is individual as well.
