“We are on the right path”

The Minister of Agriculture of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Òscar Ordeig, has stated that the swine fever outbreak that began ten days ago “is contained” because no new positives have been found outside the initial focus of the crisis (the six-kilometer radius of the Collserola natural park, in Barcelona, ​​where thirteen wild boars have been found dead with the virus).

“We are on the right path,” Ordeig said in the daily press conference to report on the crisis carried out by the Generalitat, although he has asked not to lower our guard against this animal disease, which is not transmitted to humans. “We cannot take false steps,” he insisted.

The swine fever outbreak remains under control in the infection focus area, an area of ​​six kilometers in which around one hundred dead wild boars have been found, of which only thirteen have tested positive. The containment of the outbreak has allowed it to not spread to agricultural farms and has positive effects on the economy of Catalonia, which is one of the main pig farms in Europe.

The Catalan pork market is especially oriented towards exports, which have doubled in a decade. By country, the main destinations for pork from Catalonia are China (19%), Italy (18%), France (17%) and Japan, followed by Poland (8%), Czech Republic (7%), Romania (6%) and South Korea (5%).

Controlling the situation, Ordeig explained, will allow “gradually reopening markets” after the closure of exports decreed by several countries at the beginning of the crisis. Ordeig has detailed that South Korea will be the next market to reopen. Pigs from outside the 20 kilometer radius of the affected area may once again be exported to the Asian country.

The next countries with which the Generalitat works to be able to export again are the Philippines and Japan, Ordeig added. “We have to give certainty to exporting companies to recover normality based on a job well done,” he stated.

The criterion for exporting again that the Government defends, the councilor detailed, is not to sell pigs that are raised in an area of ​​20 kilometers around the outbreak, although some countries such as China have expanded this perimeter to the entire province of Barcelona.

Ordeig has been optimistic about the commercial recovery abroad, since the presence of the disease has not been detected in any of the 56 farms located in this twenty kilometer radius. The first of the 36,500 pigs raised healthy on these farms will be slaughtered this week for consumption in the domestic pig market.

The councilor has also detailed that this week the audit will begin in the Catalan public laboratory IRTA-CReSA, which works with the virus in a center located in Collserola and which is suspected as a possible origin of the outbreak.

A scientific committee made up of six experts in African swine fever and biosafety, and logistically coordinated by IRTA-CReSA, will carry out the audit. “I ask for caution and to let the scientists get in the way,” the councilor claimed.

The committee will have as scientific coordinator Laura Pérez, head of the animal and biological safety area of ​​the Animal Health Research Center (CISA), and will be made up of Gorka Aduriz, head of the animal health area of ​​the Basque center NEIKER-BRTA; Massimo Palmarini (director of the biology department at Erasmus MC in Rotterdam (Netherlands); Gonzalo Pascual, head of biological safety at the Carlos III Health Institute in Madrid; Xavier Abad, head of the high containment unit at IRTA-CReSA; and Diana Ramírez, head of the animal production infrastructure platform and president of the IRTA animal experimentation ethics committee.

Having combed the area of ​​high risk of plague infection, a perimeter set by the administration with a radius of six kilometers around the focus of the disease, the troops working to search for wild boars and to close possible exits of animals have already begun to work in the area called low risk of infection, with a radius of 20 kilometers.

These works are carried out by a device made up of about a thousand personnel, he specified, who are officials from the General Directorate of Forests of the Generalitat, Rural Agents, local police, Mossos, Civil Guard, canine units from Madrid, Vall d’Aran and Andorra, Civil Protection, Red Cross, Medical Emergency System (SEM), UME, volunteers and firefighters from the Generalitat and Barcelona City Council.

Ordeig thanked the citizens of the Barcelona metropolitan area for massively respecting this bridge, the ban on entering the natural environment in 91 municipalities in the province of Barcelona to prevent the spread of the swine fever virus.