On Friday, the Mexican government imposed restrictions on the import of pork from Spain after an outbreak of African swine fever appeared in Barcelona, the Mexican Ministry of Agriculture said in a statement. The suspension affects commercial operations, but also products containing pork carried by travellers. The Mexican agency confirmed that this measure was adopted “on the basis of international protocols” to protect pork production in the country.
African swine fever is a disease capable of killing pigs on a farm within a few days due to fever, coughing and bleeding. Spain has eliminated this threat in the past three decades. yet. The Central Veterinary Laboratory in Algete (Madrid) confirmed the positivity of this disease in the carcasses of two wild boars that were found last Wednesday in the vicinity of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, about 20 kilometers north of the Catalan capital. These are the first cases in Spain since November 1994.
The emergence of the plague caused a preventive blockade of pork exports, as explained on Friday by the Director General of Agricultural Food Production at the Ministry, Emilio García Moro, Director General of Agricultural Food Production at the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, who described what happened as “bad news, very bad.” It is one of the points gathered by the Mexican agency to support its decision and thus avoid potential animal health risks to national production.
Thus, Mexico places a temporary barrier in front of the largest pork producer in the European Union, with a share of 24% of the total, and third in the world, surpassed only by China and the United States, according to data from the Spanish Ministry. The plague roamed sub-Saharan Africa, but in 2007 it reached Georgia, from where it entered regions such as Russia and China. It is a path that led to its presence in the eastern part of the European Union in 2014. A few years later, in 2020, it also arrived in Germany, at a time when the country was ranked as the largest pig producer in Europe. The root of the problem in this case was also the wild boar. It is one of the diseases that must be avoided, as a single case of plague puts the affected country in quarantine, and is unable to export pork.
In 2024, Mexico exported an amount of frozen pork worth about 507 million dollars, and imported an amount of about 448 million, according to data from the Ministry of Economy. Spain was the fourth largest supplier of frozen pork to Mexico (worth approximately $5.3 million). Before the European country, there were the United States (276 million), Brazil (113 million), and Canada (46.8 million).