Catalonia’s Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, Oscar Ordig, explained that on Sunday, wild boars potentially infected with African swine fever will be hunted in the Collserola area (Barcelona), by installing traps, repellents and fences so that the animals do not move to other areas. He said this in an interview in Catalonia Radio This Sunday, in which he requested the cooperation of citizens to comply with restrictions on access to the Collserola Natural Park, which remains closed on Sunday. “Yesterday the work was not finished because it is a natural park with 100 main entrances and 400 secondary entrances, and it is very difficult to close it,” he explained regarding the closure. He said that the instructions this Sunday are that the park is completely closed for entertainment and that pickup work is underway, literally.
Moreover, the Catalan advisor said that security forces, whether from the Mossos d’Esquadra, the Civil Guard or rural agents, have been reinforced to prevent access to Collserola, “especially the armored six-kilometer radius.” He also explained that the takeover would be coordinated by rural agents, together with the Ministry of Agriculture and employees from the public company Forestal Catalana, along with cooperation with other bodies such as the Civil Guard. He explained, “Any animal found must be disinfected, this animal must be kept safe, and it must be transferred to the Animal Health Research Center, and this must be done under highly advanced technical conditions.”
In this sense, he stated that the intervention of the Specific Hunting Monitoring Unit of the Military Emergency Unit (UME) is “on the table.” He pointed out that the government has made these resources available and that they will be activated if this is deemed necessary, pointing out that “today we have to see whether there are more positives.” He stressed that so far all the positive animals were within the radius of Cerdanyola del Valles (Barcelona), but if they had to expand this range they would use “the necessary technical, economic and effective means.”
Asked if there was any consideration of suspending classes at the Pilatera campus of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), close to the scope of the outbreak, he said that this had not been taken into account and that the activities of “homes, companies and university centers will remain until further notice.”
Regarding the origin of the outbreak, he said that it is not yet known, but it is being investigated: “Based on whether this virus is similar to the virus found in other countries in Europe, so we will be able to find out what the origin is.” Along these lines, he mentioned as possible hypotheses that there were some contaminated foods or that the virus was transmitted through some means of transportation.
On Saturday, Catalonia detected four new cases of African swine fever in the same place where two other cases were found a few days ago, as part of alerting the authorities to this animal disease that affects pigs and wild boars, which could put the Spanish pork sector and its exports in trouble. African swine fever has returned to Spain after 30 years without cases, a serious blow to the livestock industry. The country is the largest producer in the European Union (24% of the total) and third in the world. Catalonia, the society in which these cases were discovered, has a very prominent role in this activity. With around 5,000 pig farms, the agri-food sector is Catalonia’s strongest, and half of what is produced is sold abroad.