ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - The Kurdistan Region’s agriculture ministry said on Monday that the export of the Region's poultry and its products to Iraqi provinces will resume starting Tuesday after the Iraqi delegation's tests results came back "clean".

“The procedures for exporting poultry products, meaning chicken and eggs, will resume tomorrow [Tuesday],” Firas Sdiq, head of the agriculture ministry's animal resources directorate told The New Region.

The Iraqi Ministry of Agriculture announced in late January that they have banned the entry of poultry and its products from the Kurdistan Region to the rest of the Iraqi provinces “until the epidemiological situation becomes clear.”

The ban was implemented as a preventative measure to eliminate the risk of zoonotic diseases after a reported outbreak of a number of infections in the Kurdistan Region’s poultry farms.

The removal of the ban came after an Iraqi delegation’s inspection into the Region’s farms yielded “clean” results, Sdiq added.

The Iraqi Ministry of Agriculture’s veterinary department confirmed later in the day that the imports from the Kurdistan Region, excluding the Makhmour region, will be resumed after the tests results showed no cases of infections.

The ban on Makhmour will continue as one “positive” infection was recorded in a field containing poultry waste, according to the ministry’s statement, adding that the field had no poultry inside it and will be prohibited from raising animals for three months.

Iraqi checkpoints had previously prevented the entry of domestic products from the Kurdistan Region into the central and southern provinces for three months, on grounds that most of the producers have either had their licenses expired or do not have one at all.

Of over 10,000 factories in the Kurdistan Region, only 35 of them are licensed and their products are allowed in other parts of Iraq, Nawzad Ghafour, head of the Sulaimani Chamber of Commerce, told The New Region in November.