African swine fever cases have been detected for the first time in wild boar outside Catalonia’s original infected area.
The new cases were found near the western towns of El Papiol and Molins de Rei in Barcelona’s metropolitan area, where there are no pig farms, the regional authorities in Catalonia said on Friday. The development has resulted in additional restrictions on the movement of people and livestock being put in place, Reuters reports.
In total, 155 infected pigs have been found in the Barcelona area, with 13 new cases detected in recent days, Oscar Ordeig, head of the Catalan agriculture department, told reporters at a media briefing..
Spain’s first ASF since 1994 was discovered in late November in the Collserola hills to the north of Barcelona – and, until now, all new cases had been confined to the initial infected zones. There have still been no cases reported on farms.
“It was an expected outcome that at some point one of the boar would move to the south,” Mr Ordeig said.
He explained that because it was a secondary outbreak, the new measures – including disinfection, collection and management of boar carcasses, drone-based searches and an estimation of wild boar population densities in the infected area – would only affect the two towns.
Spain is the EU’s leading pork producer, accounting for a quarter of its output. Its exports, worth about 3.5 billion euros last year, have been hit, despite regionalisation agreements with key markets like China.