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National authorities investigating the recent African swine fever outbreak in the northeastern region are now considering the chance that the disease may have originated from a scientific laboratory. Their focus has narrowed to several nearby labs as potential points of origin.

Outbreak Details and Industry Concerns

A total of thirteen infections of the fever have been identified in wild boars in the countryside outside Barcelona since 28 November. This has prompted Spain – the EU’s largest exporter of pig products – to rush to control the outbreak before it escalates into a significant threat to the country's €8.8bn-a-year pork export industry.

Shifting Investigative Focus

Initially, regional authorities believed the outbreak started after a wild boar ate contaminated food imported from outside Spain – perhaps a discarded meat sandwich from a truck driver.

However, the Spanish ministry of agriculture has initiated a new investigation after concluding that the variant of the virus detected in the deceased boars in Catalonia is different from the one known to be present in other EU member states. Investigative findings indicate the strain in question is instead akin to one detected in the country of Georgia in the year 2007.

"This finding of a virus like the one that circulated in Georgia does not, therefore, exclude the chance that its source is a high-security facility," stated the agriculture department.

Research Link Explored

The 'Georgia 2007' viral strain is a 'standard' virus commonly employed in experimental infections in secure labs to study the virus or to evaluate the efficacy of vaccines, which are presently being developed. The analysis suggests that the virus might not have started in livestock or meat products from any of the nations where the infection is currently active.

Government Response and Review

In reaction, Salvador Illa announced he had instructed the Catalan agrifood research institute to conduct an inspection of five laboratories that work with the African swine fever virus within a 20km radius of the outbreak site.

"We are not excluding any possibilities when it comes to the source of the outbreak of this disease, but neither is it confirming any," he said. "Every theory are open. First and foremost, we need to understand what happened."

Latest Containment Measures

The agriculture ministry have confirmed 13 cases of the disease – each one in dead feral pigs located within six kilometers of the first detection site. Officials added the remains of 37 more wild animals found in the area have been analysed, with every one showing no infection for the virus. Specialists dispatched to the thirty-nine swine operations within the 20km radius have found no trace of the disease on those farms. More than one hundred personnel from the nation's emergency response forces have additionally been deployed to the region to assist police officers and wildlife rangers.

Global Background of African Swine Fever

For a long time native to Africa, African swine fever is harmless to humans but often deadly to swine. In 2018, the disease turned up in the People's Republic of China, which is has about 50% of the global pig population. By the following year, there were fears that as many as one hundred million animals had been lost. Two years later, the pathogen was detected to be in the Federal Republic of Germany, a country with one of the European Union's biggest swine herds.

The Country's Pivotal Role in Pork Production

The nation, which is the EU’s largest pork producer, exported pork products worth 5.1 billion euros to other EU countries last year, and almost €3.7bn of pork products to markets outside the bloc. Official statistics show that Spain slaughtered fifty-eight million pigs in the year 2021 – an rise of forty percent from a decade earlier.