Spain mobilised its military on Monday to tackle an outbreak of African swine fever near Barcelona.
The outbreak, authorities believe, may have started after a wild boar ate contaminated food, such as a discarded sandwich. The outbreak is now threatening the country's multibillion-euro pork export industry.
Two wild boar found dead in Collserola park, 21 km (13 miles) from Barcelona, tested positive for the disease last Friday, prompting authorities to establish a 6-km exclusion zone around Bellaterra. More suspected cases are under investigation, with additional positives expected.
"The most likely scenario is that cold cuts, a sandwich, contaminated food, could end up in a bin, and then a wild boar would eat it and become infected," Catalonia's agriculture minister, Oscar Ordeig, told Catalunya Radio. He noted that the area's heavy traffic from across Europe makes human-mediated spread plausible.
Spain, one of the world's top pork exporters
African swine fever does not affect humans but spreads quickly among pigs and wild boar, putting Spain, one of the world's top pork exporters, at significant economic risk.
The outbreak is near the AP-7 highway, a major route linking Spain and France, and the absence of infections elsewhere in Catalonia or France supports the theory of contamination via humans.
Efforts to contain the virus intensified over the weekend, with 300 Catalan police and rural agents deployed on Sunday, followed by 117 members of Spain's military emergency unit, UME, on Monday.
Spain's agriculture minister, Luis Planas, said about one-third of pork export certificates have been blocked, though no farms are currently infected. Pork operations within a 20-km radius of the initial infection site are facing temporary restrictions.
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