Every sheep and goat gets the pox vaccine, and the order does not say who pays

Every sheep and goat in Romania enters a compulsory vaccination campaign against sheep pox and goat pox, while peste des petits ruminants is for now vaccinated only in Constanța and Tulcea. ANSVSA Order no. 992/2026, signed on 26 October 2026 and published three days later in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 904, changes in 14 points Annex no. 1 to Order no. 35/2016, the document that says which sanitary veterinary actions are carried out in the field this year. The two vaccination programmes are the heavy part, and they come six days after the donation of 1.1 million doses accepted by the State through Government Decision no. 840/2026, 800,000 against pox and 300,000 against the plague.

The difference from the previous version of the annex is larger than the drafting technique suggests. Point 7 of Section 6 had a single line until now: „Variola ovină și caprină, se aplică în situația aprobării unui program național de vaccinare de către CE”, sheep pox and goat pox, applies where a national vaccination programme is approved by the EC. It was a rule waiting for an event. The new text begins with „se aplică în conformitate cu programul național de vaccinare agreat de către Comisia Europeană”, applies in accordance with the national vaccination programme agreed with the European Commission, and goes on with the vaccination zone, the coverage target, the characteristics of the vaccine, who administers it, what is recorded at holding level and how the flock is monitored after vaccination. The event has happened, so the rule has become operational. Peste des petits ruminants did not appear at all in the list of immunological actions in Section 6; it now enters as point 7¹.

The order enters into force on the day of publication, 29 October 2026. Article II says only that the order is published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, without setting any other date, and in the absence of a later date written into the text the rule in Article 12(3) of Law no. 24/2000 on legislative drafting rules, republished, applies: orders of the heads of central specialised public administration bodies enter into force on the date of publication.

Ruminant farmers are also affected by an EU rule that applies from 1 November 2026: bluetongue leaves eradication behind, and the animals move within the Union under single rules.

What it changes in practice

For the sheep and goat farmer, the immediate effect is that there is no longer any decision to take. The text says that no domestic sheep or goats are exempt from vaccination, and that animals not eligible in the initial campaign, as a rule lambs and kids under three months, are vaccinated in the mop-up campaigns. All animals over three months in the holdings included in the vaccination zone are vaccinated, and for pox the zone is the whole country. In addition, all sheep and goats entering the zone are vaccinated on arrival, which for pox means any animal brought in from outside Romania.

Vaccination is carried out by authorised private veterinarians and by official veterinarians, in accordance with the package leaflets. For the private veterinarian, the programme adds a record-keeping duty that did not exist before: at the level of each holding, electronic or documentary records must show nine items, from the individual identification of the animal to the samples taken and the measures ordered. The list refers to Annex no. 5 to Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/361, which is headed precisely „Minimum records on vaccination”.

For laboratories, three small changes have practical consequences. The diagnosis of Maedi-Visna and that of caprine arthritis or encephalitis were until now confirmed „prin ELISA sau ID”, by ELISA or immunodiffusion; from 29 October 2026 they are confirmed by ELISA alone, so a laboratory accredited only for immunodiffusion can no longer close those two diagnoses. For Aujeszky’s disease, the virological examination becomes the isolation and identification of the virus on cell cultures at LNR-IDSA, where there is a suspicion, instead of the earlier wording, „identificarea genomului viral prin PCR”, identification of the viral genome by PCR. Entomological surveillance of bluetongue gains a third series of catches: monthly, with fixed traps, one trap per county, during the period of vector activity, alongside the weekly catches in March and November and alongside the monthly catches inside animal housing during the vector-free period.

For the animal owner, the most concrete effect in money terms is in toxicological surveillance. Section 5, letter A, point 2 deals with cases of poisoning or suspected poisoning. Bees now join the list of samples, and the text fixes what is looked for in them: a set of 17 substances by gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry, from carbofuran and lindane to tebuconazole, and five neonicotinoids by liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry, acetamiprid, thiamethoxam, imidacloprid, thiacloprid and clothianidin. That is the substantive novelty, because neonicotinoids are the class involved in mass bee deaths, and until now the screening list in point 4 of the same section looked for anticoagulant rodenticides in feed and water, not systemic insecticides. The last line of the point, however, puts the cost of carrying out the tests on the owner.

A new point in the notes, point 56, changes the route the results take. Laboratory test reports for the diseases in the annex are also sent to the sanitary veterinary and food safety directorate territorially competent for the place where the samples were taken, both under official control and where testing was requested. The beekeeper who pays for the analysis himself is no longer the only one to receive the result.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

For tuberculin testing of cattle, points 4 and 5 of the order rewrite the same sentence in two places, for surveillance in non-professional holdings and for surveillance in commercial holdings, including type A holdings, in herds certified free of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex. Compared word for word, the two versions differ by eleven words, which are removed: „nu mai târziu de primele 6 luni ale anului în curs”, not later than the first six months of the current year. The team of two authorised private veterinarians is nothing new, it was already there, as was the comparative intradermal tuberculin test once a year, at intervals of no more than 12 months, in all cattle over six weeks old. What disappears is the only calendar anchor. From now on, the checks are planned only „înaintea acțiunilor imunoprofilactice”, before the immunoprophylactic actions, and the immunoprophylactic actions have no fixed date of their own: anthrax vaccination is carried out once a year, within 12 months of the previous one. Two relative deadlines, neither tied to a month in the calendar.

For official batch control of vaccines, point 41 of the notes changes in two ways. The first is a new exception: the immunological veterinary medicinal products referred to in Article 110(2) of Regulation (EU) 2019/6 no longer have to be officially controlled by the Institute for the Control of Biological Products and Veterinary Medicinal Products. That paragraph covers vaccines not authorised in the European Union, which a competent authority may allow to be used on the occurrence of an outbreak of a listed disease or of an emerging disease. Exactly the category to which the vaccines against sheep pox and goat pox and against peste des petits ruminants belong. In place of batch control, the order requires the manufacturer to be able to produce the reports on efficacy, safety, innocuity and sterility tests, plus quality control reports drawn up by an independent body, for instance a laboratory in the network of the World Organisation for Animal Health.

The second is a repair to a cross-reference. The old text based the compulsory control of all batches on Article 128(3) of Regulation (EU) 2019/6. That paragraph does not, however, lay down a general obligation: it gives the competent authority the possibility of requiring the marketing authorisation holder, where reasons of human or animal health so demand, to send samples for control by an official laboratory before placing on the market. The new text moves the legal basis to Chapter III of Annex no. 1, headed „Supravegherea și controlul unităților farmaceutice veterinare și a deținătorilor autorizațiilor de comercializare pentru produse medicinale veterinare”, the surveillance and control of veterinary pharmaceutical establishments and of marketing authorisation holders for veterinary medicinal products. Who pays for the analyses has not changed: the marketing authorisation holder.

For brucellosis in pigs, point 9 rewrites subpoint 1.1 in full and narrows it from the heading onwards. Until now the subpoint carried, for pigs, the names of three Brucella species, the bovine one, the one found in sheep and goats and the porcine one; from 29 October 2026 it carries the name of a single species, the porcine one. Serological surveillance in animals over six months old stays with iELISA, the complement fixation test and the Rose Bengal test, but the confirmation protocol is spelled out: to confirm or rule out a positive result, a new serum sample is taken from the animal concerned 14 to 42 days after the first sampling, by the authorised private veterinarian, in the presence and under the responsibility of the official veterinarian, and the sample goes to the national reference laboratory for brucellosis at the Institute for Diagnosis and Animal Health. A sampling that was not required before also appears: 14 to 21 days after an abortion or a stillbirth, a cervical swab is taken, or a vaginal swab where that is not possible.

Neither of the diseases now being vaccinated had an old text to compare with, so the useful comparison is between the two. The disease with the longer-lasting vaccine, peste des petits ruminants, with at least 36 months of post-vaccination immunity, was given the smaller zone, two counties. The disease with the shortest-lasting vaccine, pox, with at least 12 months, was given the whole country. Active surveillance is built differently too: for the plague, testing takes place before dispatch from non-professional holdings, type A holdings and commercial holdings, with deadlines of 30 and 21 days, whereas for pox active surveillance by ELISA covers only the screening in Tulcea and Constanța, the national screening, collection centres and the slaughterhouse. For the holding of origin, in the case of pox, there is no testing at all before dispatch.

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