Annita says agriculture minister must resign over foot and mouth outbreak

Disy leader Annita Demetriou on Wednesday demanded the resignation of Agriculture Minister Maria Panayiotou over the ongoing outbreak of foot and mouth disease, which has centred on the Larnaca district in recent weeks.

“The situation is dramatic and out of control,” she said, before pointing out that “behind the numbers” – which include over 13,000 animals culled – “there are people”.

Demetriou is also president of the House of Representatives.

“There are livestock farmers who are watching their hard work being wasted, workers who are worried about their income, families who are living in uncertainty, and people who are receiving conflicting messages,” she said.

“In such serious cases, society expected a unified coordination of operations and communication, from the agriculture minister and all the competent services,” she added.

She said there had been no such coordination but rather an image of contradictory positions between the government, the ministry, and the competent services.

“People hear one thing from one person and another from the other. In a health and production crisis, contradictions are not simply a communication error, they undermine trust and weaken compliance with the measures,” she said.

 “We cannot watch an entire sector, livestock farming, be destroyed and wait, after assurances from the president that protocols will change, for the minister to assure parliament that asymptomatic animals will not be killed, and then have a warrant issued the same evening for all the animals on one farm to be killed off.”

She then stressed that “when the management of a crisis leads to such chaos, taking responsibility is not a choice, it is an obligation”.

“That means resignation. Because patience has its limits.”

Panayiotou had warned MPs on Wednesday that the culling of every animal at a livestock unit where foot and mouth disease is detected is mandated by European Union law.

Not adhering to those laws, she said, could see Cyprus ejected from the European single market, and see tight restrictions placed on the movement of people, goods, and services between the island and Europe.

Thus far, around 13,500 animals have been culled since the outbreak.

With Demetriou, the leader of Disy, now having openly called for Panayiotou’s resignation, both of Cyprus’ largest parties have now called for her to leave her post, after Akel said last month that she must “resign or be sacked”.

Akel had, in addition to Panayiotou’s handling of the foot and mouth outbreak, lambasted her response to the wildfires which tore through the Limassol district last summer and to water shortages experienced by the island.

“The chain of failures and incompetence in her entire area of responsibility is damaging the country,” the party said, before adding that while the Limassol fire was “the biggest disaster in the annals of the state”, “no one took responsibility for the tragic management of them”.

On the matter of water shortages, the party said that “it is not only not solved, it is worsening day by day”, and warned that “imminent water cuts” are to follow as a result”, before turning its attention to the foot and mouth outbreak.

“Now, foot and mouth disease has developed into a crisis and the country’s livestock industry is suffering an unprecedented blow since measures were not taken in a timely manner,” it said.

It had been widely rumoured that she would be relieved of her duties during an autumn cabinet reshuffle, though when President Nikos Christodoulides eventually did perform the reshuffle in December, she remained in post.

She remains the only cabinet minister who belongs to Edek, one of the three parties which supported Christodoulides’ 2023 election campaign alongside Diko and Dipa, with this fact irking party leader Nikos Anastasiou after December’s reshuffle.