In brief

  • Six American zones leave the lists for export to the Union, from 23 September 2026. They are circles with a radius of 10 kilometres around the farms where highly pathogenic avian influenza has been confirmed: three in South Dakota, one in North Dakota and two in Minnesota. The rest of American territory stays open, including the other counties in the same three states.
  • Live birds, hatching eggs and meat are stopped. From these zones there can no longer come breeding and productive poultry, day-old chicks, hatching eggs, small consignments of fewer than 20 head, nor fresh meat of poultry, of ratites or of game birds. The suspension runs from the date of each outbreak, that is 4, 9 or 10 September 2026, 19 days before the act enters into force.
  • For Romania, the measurable effect is zero. In the years 2021-2025, Romanian imports from the United States of day-old chicks, of hatching eggs and of poultry meat were nil, according to the Union’s external trade data. The hatching eggs and the chicks used by hatcheries in Romania come from other Member States, and on the shelf nothing changes.
Act: Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2149 of 21 September 2026 amending Annexes V and XIV to Implementing Regulation (EU) 2021/404 as regards the entries for the United States in the lists of third countries, territories, or zones thereof authorised for the entry into the Union of consignments of poultry and germinal products of poultry, and of fresh meat of poultry and game birds
Published: Official Journal of the European Union, L series, 2026/2149 of 22 September 2026
In force from: 23 September 2026, the day after publication, because Article 2 of the regulation waives the usual period and invokes the urgency regime

The European Commission has cut six pieces out of the map from which the Union is allowed to buy chicks, hatching eggs and poultry meat from the United States. The mechanism is the one readers know from African swine fever, where the same technique of lists by zone keeps all 41 Romanian counties in the harshest tier: the Union does not close a whole country, it cuts the diseased areas out of it and leaves the rest open. It is called regionalisation, and its advantage is that an outbreak in one American county no longer blocks trade with the rest of the country.

Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2149 was adopted in Brussels on 21 September 2026 and published in the Official Journal of the European Union, L series, on 22 September 2026. It has four pages, two articles and an annex. Article 1 says that Annexes V and XIV to Implementing Regulation (EU) 2021/404 are amended in accordance with the annex, and Article 2 sets the entry into force on the day after publication, that is 23 September 2026. The legal basis lies in Regulation (EU) 2016/429, the so-called Animal Health Law, Article 230(1), which gives the Commission the power to draw up the lists of authorised third countries, and Article 232(1)(b), which allows it to suspend entry from a zone where the animal health situation there so requires in order to protect the herds and flocks of the Union.

What happened, concretely: on 11 September 2026, the United States informed the Commission that six new outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza had been confirmed by laboratory analysis between 4 and 10 September 2026, in poultry in South Dakota, North Dakota and Minnesota. The American veterinary authority drew around each affected establishment a restricted zone with a radius of at least 10 kilometres and applied stamping out, that is the killing of the entire flock. The Commission assessed the information and decided to suspend entry into the Union from the areas concerned.

A few words that appear in the title of the act need translating. Germinal products means, under Article 4 of Regulation (EU) 2016/429, semen, oocytes and embryos intended for artificial reproduction, plus eggs for incubation; in birds, in practice, hatching eggs. Game birds are wild birds that have been hunted, and their meat goes on a list separate from that of birds reared on farms. Zone is, again in the 2016/429 definition, an area with a precise geographical delimitation, with an animal health status distinct from the rest of the country and subject to surveillance and biosecurity measures of its own. Entry is the block of rows in a table belonging to a single country, that is exactly what this regulation amends.

What it changes in practice

The act adds 24 new rows, all in the entry for the United States, and amends and removes none. The count, annex by annex:

In Annex V, Part 1, Section B, the list for poultry and germinal products, six rows go in, one for each new zone, inserted after the row for zone US-2.1406. Part 2 of the same annex, the one with the geographical descriptions, gets six new descriptions. In Annex XIV, Part 1, Section B, the list for fresh meat, twelve rows are added, two per zone: one for poultry and ratite meat, the other for game bird meat. Annex XIV needs no descriptions of its own, because its Part 2 refers expressly to Annex V for the American zones.

The new zones and their closing dates, as they appear in both annexes: US-2.1407, Edmunds County in South Dakota, 4 September 2026; US-2.1408, McPherson County in South Dakota, 9 September 2026; US-2.1409, Turner County in South Dakota, 9 September 2026; US-2.1410, Lamoure County in North Dakota, 4 September 2026; US-2.1411, Otter Tail County in Minnesota, 10 September 2026; US-2.1412, Becker County in Minnesota, 10 September 2026. Three states, six zones, exactly as recital (5) says, and the dates all fall inside the 4-10 September 2026 range the act announces. Each zone is described as a circle with a radius of 10 kilometres starting from a north point given by coordinates.

The zone code is read according to a simple rule, written in Annex I to Regulation (EU) 2021/404: the country code followed by the figure zero means the whole territory, while the code followed by any other figure means a zone described separately. So US-0 and US-1 cover the United States without the diseased areas, while US-2 is the group of diseased areas, numbered US-2.1, US-2.2 and so on, up to US-2.1412.

The letters in the certificates column show what can no longer leave. In Annex V there are ten: BPP, breeding and productive poultry other than ratites; BPR, breeding and productive ratites, that is ostriches, emus and rheas; DOC, day-old chicks other than of ratites; DOR, day-old chicks of ratites; SP, birds intended for slaughter other than ratites; SR, ratites intended for slaughter; POU-LT20, consignments of fewer than 20 birds; HEP, hatching eggs of poultry other than of ratites; HER, hatching eggs of ratites; HE-LT20, consignments of fewer than 20 hatching eggs. Annex XIV has three: POU, fresh poultry meat other than of ratites; RAT, fresh ratite meat; GBM, fresh meat of wild game birds.

One code stays untouched, and its absence says something: SPF, specified pathogen-free eggs, used in vaccine production and in laboratories, are listed under US-0, that is at the level of the whole country, and do not figure among the suspended certificates. Those consignments continue.

The last two letters, N and P1, are specific conditions and are defined in Part 3 of each annex. P1 means suspension of entry into the Union because of an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza, that is precisely the measure taken here. N means something else and is not a restriction: the United States has presented guarantees that its legislation on Newcastle disease is equivalent to that of the Union, and the mention stays on the row because that status is not lost on account of avian influenza. On the rows for game bird meat only P1 appears, never N, and that is so throughout Annex XIV: of the 2,231 GBM rows in the consolidated version, not one carries the mention N, because the guarantee concerns birds reared on farms, not birds that have been shot.

Columns 6 and 7 of the tables are called the closing date and the opening date. The six new rows have the closing date filled in and the opening date empty, which means suspension without a term. Reopening does not happen automatically and has no timetable: it requires a new regulation, which the Commission adopts once the United States demonstrates that the conditions in Article 38(2) of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2020/692 are met. There are three of them: stamping out carried through to the end, cleaning and disinfection of all infected establishments and, after those are completed, at least three months of surveillance with negative results on a representative sample of the exposed populations. Counted from the middle of September, the three-month threshold cannot be reached before the end of 2026, and in practice the period is longer.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

Compared with the previous text of the two annexes, the only change is the addition. No American entry has been rewritten, no zone has been removed and no opening date has been filled in. The regulation reopens nothing, it only closes.

To see the proportion, the American entry as a whole is worth a look. In the consolidated version of Regulation (EU) 2021/404 as at 25 August 2026, Annex V Part 1 Section B contained 1,382 US-2 zones, numbered from US-2.1, closed in March 2017, through to US-2.1402. Of those, 1,316 had already been reopened, while 66 were still suspended. The present zones are added to the suspended group.

The length of a suspension can be measured, because the table keeps both dates. For the 1,316 reopened zones, the interval between closing and reopening has a median value of 106 days, a mean of 114 days and a maximum of 484. In other words, an American zone closed for avian influenza stays off the list, as a rule, for three and a half months. If the six new zones behave like the majority, their reopening would fall in the second half of December 2026.

The average, however, hides the tails. The oldest suspension still in force is US-2.277, Ward County in North Dakota, closed on 23 March 2023 and still so on 23 September 2026, that is 1,280 days. For the 66 zones suspended at the end of August 2026, the median length of closure had already passed 197 days.

The second difference from the previous situation has to do with the calendar, not with the list. The closing dates come before entry into force: the Edmunds and Lamoure zones are closed with effect from 4 September 2026, while the regulation applies from 23 September 2026. Between those two moments there are 19 days. The act provides no transitional measure for consignments that left during that interval, and Regulation (EU) 2021/404 has no general one either, because its transitional provision concerned the move from the old rules, in 2021 and 2022.

Advantages and disadvantages

What it improves

  • The suspension is strictly local. Six circles with a radius of 10 kilometres mean at most 1,885 square kilometres, and trade with the rest of the United States continues with no new formality.
  • The regulation applies directly, with no Romanian act to bring the law into line, so the border control posts have the same list in all Member States on the same day.
  • The reaction is fast for a European act: 12 days from the American notification to adoption and another two to entry into force.
  • The act does not touch specified pathogen-free eggs, used in vaccine manufacture, because those are listed at the level of the whole country, not by zone.
  • The text is short and verifiable: four pages, 24 new rows, the same dates in both annexes, no cross-references calling for a second reading.

What remains a problem

  • The closing date precedes entry into force by 19 days, and the act does not say what happens to consignments certified during that interval and already on their way.
  • The descriptions of the six zones appear in English in the Romanian edition of the Official Journal of the European Union, including whole sentences about the radius of the circle and the starting point.
  • The zones are identified by the coordinates of the north point of the circle, not of the centre, a convention that calls for care from anyone who has to check whether a farm falls inside the area or not.
  • The American entry has reached 1,400 positions, and the list of those still suspended can only be read by going through the table row by row; there is no summary of the active zones.
  • Neither the recitals nor the operative part say which species were hit, even though the difference between turkeys, laying hens and breeding stock matters to anyone estimating the effects on the market.

Practical advice

  1. If you work in poultry farming in Romania, you have nothing to change. The external trade data show that the hatching eggs and the day-old chicks used here come from other Member States, and this regulation does not touch movements inside the Union.
  2. If you do nonetheless have a contract with an American supplier, ask him for the code of the zone the goods leave from, not the name of the state. The restriction applies to the numbered US-2 zone, not to South Dakota or to Minnesota as a whole.
  3. Check the date of the animal health certificate against the closing date in the table. For the Edmunds and Lamoure zones the reference date is 4 September 2026, for McPherson and Turner 9 September 2026, and for Otter Tail and Becker 10 September 2026.
  4. Do not mistake the mention N for a restriction. It shows that the United States has recognised guarantees on Newcastle disease and it stays on the row even after the suspension for avian influenza.
  5. For game bird meat, look only at P1. The GBM row never carries the mention N, so the only reason for blocking is the avian influenza outbreak.
  6. If you are following the reopening of a zone, follow the L series of the Official Journal of the European Union. The opening date is filled in by a new regulation, not by an announcement from the American authority, and there is no separate notice to importers.
  7. When you compare two versions of the annex, compare the zone numbers, not the names of the counties. The same American county can be given different zones for different outbreaks, and Edmunds and Becker have appeared on the list before.

Frequently asked questions

Will chicken get more expensive in Romania because of this regulation?
No. In 2025, Romania imported poultry meat worth EUR 252.28 million, of which only 2,291 tonnes, that is 2.3% by volume, came from outside the Union, and nothing at all came from the United States. Across the Union as a whole, imports of poultry meat from the United States came in 2025 to 33 kilograms, worth EUR 2,974, out of a total of 387,300 tonnes brought in from outside the Union.
Who actually imports from the United States what the act blocks?
In 2025, the Member States bought from the United States hatching eggs worth EUR 11.65 million, that is 38.6% of hatching egg imports from outside the Union, and day-old chicks worth EUR 4.39 million, that is 3.2% of the total. The buyers were France, with EUR 6.61 million on eggs, Spain, with EUR 3.49 million, then Germany, the Netherlands, Hungary, Ireland and Bulgaria. Romania does not appear on the list in any of the years 2021-2025.
Then why does the act matter for Romania?
It matters at second hand. American breeding material enters the Union through France, Spain, Germany or the Netherlands, and from there it circulates freely. Romanian firms buy on a market that American genetics partly feeds, so a prolonged tightening would push up the price on that market. The present regulation, with six zones out of a list of 1,400, is too small to show up in an invoice.
What exactly do the codes US-2.1407 and those that follow mean?
They are sequence numbers of the American zones under restriction. The country code followed by zero means the whole territory, while any other figure means a zone described separately in Part 2 of the annex. The US-2 group brings together the areas hit by disease from 2017 onwards, and the six new ones are positions 1407-1412 in that group.
How is the suspension lifted?
By filling in the „opening date” column, in a future regulation. The conditions are in Article 38(2) of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2020/692: stamping out carried through to the end, cleaning and disinfection of all infected establishments and at least three months of surveillance with negative results after those are completed. On the experience of the list, the median length of an American suspension has so far been 106 days.
Why does the act enter into force the day after publication, not after twenty days?
Because Article 2 provides so expressly, and recital (9) explains why: the amendments have to enter into force as a matter of urgency, given the risk the outbreaks represent for the herds and flocks of the Union. The usual period of twenty days applies only where the act says nothing else.
Does the regulation have to be transposed by a Romanian act?
No. A European regulation applies directly and in full in all Member States, unlike a directive, which requires a national transposing act. The National Sanitary Veterinary and Food Safety Authority applies the lists as they are published, with no internal order to take them over.

Editorial analysis

The act does its job and does it fast. Between the American notification of 11 September 2026 and entry into force on 23 September 2026, twelve days passed, which, for a Commission act requiring the opinion of a standing committee, is close to the lower limit. The text is coherent: the six zones divide across the three states announced in the recitals, the closing dates fall inside the declared range, and the same dates appear identically in both annexes. We found nothing to flag as a defect with legal consequences, which is why this article has no errata section.

The geography is worth a look, though, because it shows how finely the instrument cuts. The six circles come nominally to 1,885 square kilometres, as much as Ilfov County and a fifth again. In reality the area is smaller: the north points of the Edmunds and McPherson zones in South Dakota are 16.8 kilometres from each other, so the two circles with a radius of 10 kilometres overlap, and around 24 square kilometres are lost from the total. The Minnesota pair, Otter Tail and Becker, are 20.4 kilometres apart, that is four hundred metres from touching. In other words, four of the six new outbreaks are grouped in two neighbouring pairs, and that can be seen from the coordinates, not from the text, because nowhere does the act say that the zones are adjacent.

The second observation comes out of the comparison with the history of the entry, not out of reading the act. The American entry has, in the version consolidated at 25 August 2026, 1,382 zones, of which 1,316 reopened and 66 still suspended. The median suspension lasted 106 days, but the distribution has a long tail: Ward County in North Dakota, zone US-2.277, has been closed since 23 March 2023, that is for 1,280 days, and for the zones under suspension at the end of August the median length had passed 197 days. Reopening does not happen of itself. It requires the American authority to carry stamping out, cleaning and disinfection through to the end, then three months of surveillance, and only afterwards the Union to adopt a new act. Each of these links can cause delay, and the table does not show at which of them a given case has stalled.

The third observation concerns the distance between the act and its reader. The descriptions of the six zones in Annex V Part 2 are printed in English in the Romanian edition of the Official Journal of the European Union, whole sentences, not just proper names: „State of South Dakota Edmunds 21 Edmunds County: A circular zone of a 10 km radius starting with North point”. In the Romanian edition the name of the country, „Statele Unite ale Americii”, is translated, the rest is not. That is how the whole annex looks: of the more than 1,200 descriptions of American zones in the consolidated version, the great majority are in English, and a handful, some seventy-five, are in Romanian. A Romanian operator who wants to find out whether his goods come from a closed zone reads, in an official text in the Romanian language, a sentence the act did not take the trouble to translate.

Finally, what does not appear in the act is as interesting as what does. The regulation does not say which species were hit, even though the difference is a large one: a turkey farm in Otter Tail, the county with the largest turkey production in Minnesota, and a breeding farm mean different things for the supply chain. Nor does it say how many birds were killed under the stamping out it invokes. This information exists, because Article 37(f) of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2020/692 obliges the Americans to send it to the Commission within 24 hours of confirmation of the outbreak, but it stays in the administrative file, not in the act.

What should be changed

  • The act should expressly provide for the regime of consignments on their way. Between the closing date and entry into force there are 19 days here, and goods certified during that interval reach the Union border without it being known from the text whether they may enter or not. One sentence in Article 2 would settle the ambiguity for all acts of this kind.
  • The descriptions of the zones should be translated into the language of the edition. A text published in Romanian that contains whole sentences in English about the radius of a circle and its starting point forces the addressee to work in a language the act does not require of him.
  • The coordinates should be given for the centre of the zone, not for the north point of the circle. The present convention requires every user to redo a calculation before knowing whether an establishment lies inside the area, and that calculation is a source of avoidable mistakes.
  • The Commission should publish, once a month, the list of zones actually under suspension. At present it can be obtained only by going through a table of more than one thousand four hundred rows and checking which of them have the opening date empty.
  • The recitals should state the species and the size of the flock killed. The information is already sent to the Commission within 24 hours, under Article 37(f) of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2020/692, and having it in the act would let the reader judge for himself the economic stake of the suspension.
  • Zones closed for more than a year should receive a separate justification. An area suspended for 1,280 days, as Ward County is, is no longer an emergency measure, and the text nowhere shows why the three conditions for relisting could not be met.

Original text of the legal act

The text below is reproduced in Romanian, the official form of publication.

The full text, as published in the Official Gazette of Romania

Official Journal of the European Union, L series, 2026/2149 of 22 September 2026 4 pages PDF, 485 KB

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