Author: Charlie Devereux and Joan Foss
MADRID/BARCELONA, Dec 5 (Reuters) – Catalonia’s regional government said on Friday it would investigate a research center outside Barcelona after Spain’s agriculture ministry said a recent outbreak of swine fever may have been caused by a laboratory leak.
Spain, the EU’s top pork producer, is trying to reassure trading partners after 13 wild boar tested positive for the virus in a mountain outside the city. The disease is harmless to humans but can be fatal to pigs and wild boar.
The ministry said genome sequencing by a Madrid laboratory showed the strain was “very similar” to one first discovered in Georgia in 2007 and is now widely used in research and vaccine development. Other cases in Europe belong to a different genome.
“The discovery of a virus similar to the one circulating in Georgia therefore does not rule out the possibility that it originated in a biocontainment facility,” the Ministry of Agriculture said.
Catalan officials so far suspect the virus spread after wild boars ate contaminated food, possibly sandwiches brought by truck drivers from abroad.
“Reports indicate that the origin of the virus may not have come from animals or animal products in any of the countries where infections currently exist,” the ministry said.
It did not name any labs in its statement. But Catalonia’s top agriculture official, Oscar Ordegue, said the regional government would launch an investigation into the state-funded Animal Health Research Center (Cresa).
The center is located next to the Autonomous University of Barcelona and is within a six-kilometer (four-mile) containment zone imposed by authorities following the outbreak. Aldage said other labs may also be investigated.
In 2017, the World Organization for Animal Health designated Cresa as a swine fever research center.
The laboratory did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but it told news verification website Maldita.es that it had found no evidence that it was the source of the outbreak.
According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the “Georgia 2007” swine fever virus spread to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia and Belarus, and reached the eastern countries of the European Union in 2014.
It arrived in China in 2018 and caused huge damage. China’s pork production fell by 27% in 2019.
(Reporting by Charlie Devereux, Joan Faus and Jesus Calero; Editing by Mark Potter and Mark Heinrich)