Turkey closes livestock markets amid food-and-mouth disease outbreak: What to know

Turkey said on Wednesday it was shutting down all livestock markets to control the spread of a highly contagious strain of foot-and-mouth disease that is hitting the country’s agricultural sector hard. The government stressed that the measures would not impact food security.

What happened: Turkey’s Agriculture Ministry said in a statement it had detected a new strain of the potentially fatal disease amid the outbreak, which is blamed on animal movement during the Islamic holiday Eid…