We are facing the greatest threat to livestock farming in 30 years

As I write this, the Military Emergency Unit is deploying to Collserola to try to contain the African swine fever epidemic that has already left 14 dead wild boars and threatens bring the entire Spanish pork sector to a historic crisis.

Right now, while the Generalitat finishes the tests on the 39 livestock farms in the area, more than 80 UME operatives (together with the Rural Agents and the Civil Guard) are sweeping the natural park between Barcelona and Cerdanyola del Vallès.

Thirty years later, this animal disease is back.

What has happened? On November 26, in the vicinity of the campus of the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Bellaterra, two dead wild boars were found. The tests by the veterinary services of the Generalitat of Catalonia left no room for doubt: the African swine fever virus was back on the peninsula. It was the first positive in Spain since November 1994.

After notification to the Ministry of Agriculture, confirmation of the positives by the Central Veterinary Laboratory of Algete (Madrid) and the implementation of the control device, the Department of the Generalitat found four other bodies more in the same area.

Given the confirmation of the outbreak, the Government requested intervention of the UME hunting control unit.

Aren’t we overreacting a little? That’s what it might seem like. After all, African swine fever does not affect humans and is relatively localized among wild pigs in a specific natural park. The question that many ask is whether it is really necessary to mobilize one of the elite units of the Spanish army for 14 dead wild boars.

And the answer, I’m afraid, is yes. Although it is a strictly zoonotic disease (and, indeed, does not affect humans) it has mortality and morbidity levels close to 100% among domestic pigs. That is, it is a disease that “can kill all the pigs on a farm after a few days of fever, coughing and bleeding.”

And the world takes it very seriously. To the point that “the appearance of a single case of plague causes preventive blocking of pork exports.” There are more than 20 countries that, to begin with, they do not accept regionalization and, therefore, the veto of Spanish pork exports is en bloc and immediate. Among them are Japan or Mexico. The Ministry of Agriculture is in negotiations with them, but shipments are stopped.

We must not forget that it is leader in pork export within the European Union and ranks third worldwide in production. The arrival of African swine fever (however predictable it could be) is a catastrophe for the sector. And for Spanish foreign trade in general: China, which imports 20% of Spanish pork and which has just signed a historic agreement precisely on pork with the presence of the Kings, is very pending of what is happening in Catalonia (and the possible expansion of the virus).

We must not forget that the arrival of the plague to Spain in the 60s (through Portugal and its African colonies) led an international isolation of the Iberian pig for more than three decades.

And now what? The first thing is to “clean” Collserola. That is why the deployment has been so rapid and large. But afterward, it will be time to identify the origin of the outbreak (Councilor Òscar Ordeig has pointed to contaminated food as the main suspect, but it is still not clear) and, above all, we will have to reflect on hunting and veterinary controls.

Because, as I said before, this is not a surprise. In 2014, reports were already saying that the virus was rampant across Europe’s eastern border; but it wasn’t until 2020 when he jumped to Germany also through a wild boar. The German country was, by the way, at that time the largest pork producer in the EU.

Since then, the virus has already appeared in 15 EU countries (Germany, Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovakia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, Belgium and Sweden). Just these last two They have managed to eradicate it again after the application of draconian control measures.

Now it’s our turn and we have a lot at stake.

Image | Oscar in the middle | Jonathan Kemper

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