The German parliament’s upper house, which represents the country’s federal states, made the Schmallenberg livestock virus a notifiable disease, meaning authorities have a legal obligation to report cases, the Agriculture Ministry said.

As other European countries report new cases of the disease, the ministry has called for a European requirement to report outbreaks, it said in a statement on its website today.

The country had 1,117 farms with confirmed cases of the livestock virus as of yesterday, according to a report by the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut. The virus, named after the German town where it was first identified in November, causes stillbirths and deformed offspring in sheep and cattle.

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