Spain mobilises military against swine fever, says contaminated sandwich could be cause
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
A wild boar eating contaminated food is suspected to be cause of the outbreak.
PHOTO: PIXABAY
Follow topic:
BELLATERRA, Spain – Spain’s military was deployed on Dec 1 to contain an African swine fever outbreak near Barcelona
Spain confirmed on Nov 28 that two wild boars found dead in Collserola park, 21km from Barcelona, had tested positive for the disease, prompting the establishment of a 6km exclusion zone around the affected area in Bellaterra.
The authorities are currently analysing more suspected cases in the area and expect additional positives.
“The most likely option... is that cold cuts, a sandwich, contaminated food, could end up in a bin – we have to take into account that Bellaterra is an area with a lot of traffic from all over Europe – and then that a wild boar would have eaten it and become infected,” Catalonia’s agriculture minister Oscar Ordeig told Catalunya Radio on Dec 1.
African swine fever, while harmless to humans, spreads rapidly among pigs and wild boar, posing a significant economic risk to Spain, one of the world’s largest pork exporters.
The infected area is close to the AP-7 highway, a major transport route linking Spain and France.
Mr Ordeig said the absence of infected wild boar elsewhere in Catalonia and France suggests human transportation of contaminated food could have introduced the virus.
Efforts to control the outbreak intensified on Nov 30, with 300 Catalan police and rural agents deployed, followed by 117 members of Spain’s military emergency unit UME on Dec 1.
Spain’s agriculture minister Luis Planas said on Nov 29 that about one-third of the country’s pork export certificates have been blocked as a result of the outbreak, though no farms have been affected so far.
Pork farms within a 20km radius of the initial infection site are facing operating and sales restrictions. REUTERS
