National officials investigating the ongoing African swine fever incident in Catalonia are now considering the possibility that the virus may have originated from a scientific laboratory. Attention has shifted to five nearby facilities as potential points of origin.
A total of thirteen cases of the virus have been identified in wild boars in the rural areas outside Barcelona beginning on 28 November. This has prompted Spain – the European Union's largest exporter of pig products – to scramble to control the outbreak before it escalates into a significant risk to the country's €8.8bn-a-year pig meat export sector.
Initially, regional officials suspected the outbreak started after a boar ate infected meat products brought in from outside Spain – perhaps a discarded meat sandwich from a truck driver.
However, the national ministry of agriculture has opened a different line of inquiry after determining that the variant of the virus found in the deceased animals in Catalonia is not the same as the one reported to be circulating in other EU member states. According to a report indicate the strain in question is rather similar to one found in Georgia in the year 2007.
"The discovery of a virus like the one that was present in Georgia does not, therefore, rule out the chance that its origin lies in a high-security laboratory," said the agriculture department.
The 'Georgia-2007' viral strain is a 'standard' pathogen commonly used in experimental infections in containment facilities to study the virus or to test the effectiveness of treatments, which are presently under development. The analysis suggests that the virus might not have started in livestock or animal products from any of the nations where the disease is currently present.
In response, the regional president of Catalonia stated he had instructed the regional research body to carry out an inspection of several laboratories that work with the African swine fever virus within a 20-kilometer radius of the affected area.
"The regional government are not excluding any possibilities when it comes to the origin of the incident of African swine fever, but nor are we confirming any," he said. "All hypotheses remain open. Above all, we need to know what happened."
The authorities have confirmed 13 cases of the disease – all of them in dead feral pigs located within six kilometers of the initial focus. They have said the remains of 37 more wild animals discovered in the zone have been tested, with all showing no infection for the virus. Specialists dispatched to the 39 swine operations within the surrounding zone have found no trace of the disease there. Over one hundred members from the country's military emergencies unit have also been sent to the region to assist law enforcement and forestry agents.
Long native to Africa, ASF is not dangerous to people but often deadly to swine. In 2018, the virus turned up in the People's Republic of China, which is has about half of the global pigs. By the following year, there were concerns that up to 100 million animals had been lost. Two years later, the virus was confirmed to be in Germany, home to one of the European Union's biggest swine herds.
The nation, which is the EU’s biggest pork producer, exported pork products worth €5.1bn to other European nations in the previous year, and nearly 3.7 billion euros of pig-based goods to destinations outside the bloc. Official data indicate that the country slaughtered 58 million pigs in 2021 – an increase of forty percent from a ten years prior.
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