African swine fever outbreak in Spain may have leaked from research lab, officials say

Spanish authorities investigating the African swine fever outbreak in Catalonia are now looking into the possibility that the disease may have leaked from a research facility and are focusing on five nearby laboratories as potential sources. Thirteen cases of the fever have been confirmed in wild boars in the countryside outside Barcelona since 28 November, prompting Spain – the EU’s largest pork exporter – to scramble to contain the outbreak before it becomes a serious threat to the country’s €8.8bn-a-year pork export industry, worth €8.8bn (£7.7bn). The regional authorities initially believed the disease may have begun to circulate after a wild boar ate contaminated food that had been brought in from outside Spain – perhaps in the form of a meat sandwich discarded by a haulier. But Spain’s agriculture ministry has opened a new line of inquiry after concluding that the strain of the virus found in the dead boars in Catalonia is not the same as the one reported to be circulating in other EU member states. According to a report, the strain in question is instead similar to one detected in Georgia in 2007. “The discovery of a virus similar to the one that circulated in Georgia does not, therefore, rule out the possibility that its origin lies in a biological containment facility,” the ministry said on Friday. “The ‘Georgia 2007’ virus strain is a ‘reference’ virus frequently used in experimental infections in containment facilities to study the virus or to evaluate the efficacy of vaccines, which are currently under development. The report suggests that the virus may not have originated in animals or animal products from any of the countries where the infection is currently present.” On Saturday, Salvador Illa, the regional president of Catalonia, said he had ordered the Catalan agrifood research institute to conduct an audit of five facilities that work with the African swine fever virus within 20km of the outbreak site. “The regional government isn’t ruling out any possibilities when it comes to the origin of the outbreak of African swine fever, but neither is it confirming any,” Illa said. “All hypotheses remain open. First and foremost, we need to know what happened.” The agriculture ministry has confirmed 13 cases of the virus – all of them in dead wild boar found within 6km of the initial focus. It has said the corpses of 37 more wild animals found in the zone have been analysed, and that all had tested negative for swine fever. Experts dispatched to the 39 pig farms within a 20km radius of the affected area have found no trace of the illness in animals there. More than 100 personnel from Spain’s military emergencies unit have also been deployed to the area to work alongside police officers and wildlife rangers. Long endemic to Africa, African swine fever is harmless to humans but often fatal to pigs. In 2018, the virus turned up in China, which is home to about half of the world’s pigs. By 2019, there were concerns that as many as 100 million pigs had been lost. Two years later, the virus was confirmed to be in Germany, home to one of the EU’s largest swine herds. Spain, which is the EU’s biggest pork producer, exported pig meat products worth €5.1bn (£4.5bn) to other EU countries last year, and almost €3.7bn of pork products to markets outside the bloc. Spain slaughtered 58 million pigs in 2021 – up 40% from a decade earlier.