🔗 Share this article

National officials investigating the recent ASF outbreak in the northeastern region are now considering the chance that the virus could have escaped from a scientific laboratory. Their focus has shifted to several local labs as potential points of origin.

Confirmed Cases and Economic Concerns

A total of thirteen infections of the fever have been identified in feral pigs in the rural areas outside Barcelona since 28 November. This has prompted Spain – the European Union's biggest pork exporter – to scramble to control the outbreak before it becomes a serious threat to the nation's multi-billion euro pig meat export sector.

Shifting Investigative Focus

At first, local officials suspected the outbreak started after a boar consumed contaminated meat products imported from outside Spain – possibly a discarded meat sandwich from a haulier.

However, the Spanish ministry of agriculture has opened a different line of inquiry after determining that the strain of the pathogen detected in the dead animals in the region is not the same as the one reported to be present in other European countries. Investigative findings indicate the identified virus is rather akin to one found in the country of Georgia in 2007.

"The discovery of a virus similar to the one that was present in that country does not, therefore, rule out the possibility that its origin is a high-security facility," said the agriculture department.

Research Link Examined

The 'Georgia-2007' virus strain is a 'reference' virus commonly used in experimental infections in secure labs to research the virus or to evaluate the effectiveness of vaccines, which are currently under development. The analysis implies that the virus may not have started in animals or animal products from any of the nations where the infection is currently active.

Official Actions and Audit

In reaction, the regional president of Catalonia announced he had instructed the Catalan agrifood research institute to conduct an inspection of five laboratories that work with the ASF virus within a 20-kilometer radius of the affected area.

"The regional government are not excluding any possibilities when it comes to the source of the outbreak of African swine fever, but nor are we confirming any," the official stated. "Every theory remain open. First and foremost, we need to know the facts."

Latest Control Measures

The agriculture ministry have confirmed 13 cases of the virus – all of them in deceased feral pigs located within 6km of the first detection site. They have said the remains of 37 more animals discovered in the zone have been tested, with every one testing negative for swine fever. Specialists sent to the thirty-nine swine operations within the surrounding zone have detected no trace of the disease on those farms. Over 100 personnel from the country's military emergencies unit have additionally been sent to the region to work alongside police officers and forestry agents.

Global Context of ASF

Long native to Africa, African swine fever is harmless to people but frequently fatal to swine. In the year 2018, the virus emerged in the People's Republic of China, which is has about half of the world’s pigs. By 2019, there were fears that up to one hundred million pigs had been lost. Two years later, the pathogen was confirmed to be in the Federal Republic of Germany, home to one of the European Union's largest swine herds.

Spain's Pivotal Role in Pork Production

Spain, which is the EU’s largest producer of pig meat, exported pig meat products worth 5.1 billion euros to other European nations last year, and almost 3.7 billion euros of pork products to destinations outside the bloc. National statistics indicate that the country processed fifty-eight million swine in the year 2021 – an increase of 40% from a decade earlier.