According to reports, the Prosecutor of the Supreme Court, Konstantinos Tzavellas, has ordered an urgent preliminary investigation to be carried out by nine Courts of Appeal prosecutors across the country, to determine whether any person, public official or not, has committed the offence of violating disease prevention measures (Article 285 of the Penal Code), relating to the prevention of the spread in Greece of the contagious disease of sheep and goat pox.

At the same time, Mr Tzavellas is asking his colleagues to investigate whether other criminal offences, which are prosecuted ex officio, have also been committed.

His order was sent to the Courts of Appeal prosecutors of Larissa, Thrace, Thessaloniki, Western Macedonia, Lamia, Western Central Greece, the North Aegean, Nafplio and the Aegean, with instructions that it be forwarded to the local Public Prosecutors of First Instance, along with the letter from the Minister of Rural Development and Food, Kostas Tsiaras, to the Prosecutor of the Supreme Court, as well as the documents submitted with that letter.

In this letter, Mr Tsiaras refers to violations of biosecurity measures adopted in accordance with the law by the competent authorities to prevent the spread in Greece of sheep and goat pox, through:

a) livestock farmers failing to declare their dead animals so that sanitary burial could take place,

b) illegal movements of sheep and goats,

c) the confirmed – albeit limited – illegal import into Greece of vaccines not approved by the European Union and the illegal vaccination of sheep and goats with these vaccines, and

d) statements by politicians and agricultural cooperative representatives encouraging non-compliance with the adopted biosecurity measures, instead promoting the use of unauthorised vaccines (not licensed by the National Organisation for Medicines, the Ministry of Rural Development and Food and the European Union) against sheep and goat pox, which are produced in third countries and are of dubious effectiveness.