NAMIBIA’S agriculture ministry has lifted a ban on the import of live pigs and pork products from South Africa. The ban was imposed on September 18 in response to an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. The only restrictions that will remain in place are for cloven-hoofed animals and products from KwaZulu-Natal, and these will be lifted when South Africa declares that area free of infection. After the outbreak of foot-and-mouth two weeks ago on a pig farm in Camperdown, near Pietermaritzburg, officials culled all cloven-hoofed animals on 14 farms surrounding the affected farms and placed the farms under quarantine for four weeks. Foot-and-mouth disease is a highly contagious deadly viral infection which occurs in cloven-hoofed animals such as pigs, sheep, goats, cattle and game. – AFP