The Spanish agri-food sector is still suffering from the consequences of African swine fever. Mercolleida’s General Manager, Miquel Angel Burges, announced on Thursday that the auction, considered a national reference in the field of the pork market, has agreed to reduce the price of a kilo of pork by 10 cents again, to 1.10 euros, in response to the African Swine Fever (ASF) crisis. Mercolleida’s decision comes after it agreed on Monday to a decrease of 10 cents, which reduced prices from 1.30 euros (recorded a week ago) to 1.20. This collapse in pork prices coincides with the confirmation of four new positive cases of swine fever among wild boars in the Collserola region of Barcelona. In total, there are 13 animals affected, all in the same area.
Despite the new cases discovered, the state’s Minister of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Food, Oscar Ordig, said that the “vast majority” of the 50 wild boars found dead in the Collserola area (Barcelona), where the first cases of African swine fever were recorded, tested negative for the disease. The head of agriculture stressed that it was “almost certain” that African swine fever was introduced due to a human factor via AP-7 or another means of communication: “We will know in the coming days that it was not introduced through wild boar infection, but this was a human factor.”
For his part, the director of Merculeda requested that pigs be slaughtered on farms located within a 20-kilometre radius of the point where the dead wild boars that tested positive for the ASF virus were found so far, in the area around Collserola (Barcelona), to prevent the spread of the virus.
Farmers regret the low prices and deplore the necessity of selling meat now at below cost. Burgess has defended himself by ensuring that abattoirs should benefit: “It is necessary to continue slaughtering pigs and allow abattoirs to have margin to produce meat at a good pace because one of the current problems is their capacity for frozen meat, which has reached its limit.”
The European Union on Thursday expanded the municipalities in the region affected by the swine fever outbreak from 64 to 91, but according to Ordig, the disease is still affecting the same 39 farms within a 20-kilometre safety radius around the initial outbreak. At a press conference on Thursday, Ordeg wanted to make it absolutely clear that the enlargement of municipalities defined by the EU does not change the current radius of concentration. He also announced that a “white corridor” would be created around this range, or in other words, all wild boars close to the initial outbreak would be exterminated so that the outbreak could not be transmitted.
The Catalan administration and the Ministry of Agriculture intend to relax the veto of the quarantine imposed by non-EU countries on Spanish pork exports. Ordig wants only 39 farms to be banned from export, even though a week after the first wild boar case was detected, no contaminated pigs had been detected.
The European Commission therefore wants to provide furniture for export. China accepts regionalization, or in other words, the continuation of trade agreements, with the exception of only the province of Barcelona (not all of Spain) affected by the outbreak of African swine fever.
Of the three thousand million euros represented by the pork sector in Catalonia, one thousand euros were obtained thanks to exports from outside the European Union. According to Ordig, 80% of these 1,000 euros are obtained on the Asian market. He stressed, “With China, we only achieved regionalization of the region. But we made the United Kingdom, the Philippines and Chile accept that regionalization is only the area defined by the European Commission.” Now, the Ministry of Agriculture is negotiating with South Korea and Serbia so that they can be open – like the UK and Chile – to excluding exports that come from only 91 municipalities, and primarily allowing exports from the Osuna region to be accepted. The trade relationship with China involves an exchange of €400 million that appears to have been saved, but the biggest problem comes with Japan. This country has closed the pork market with all of Spain and in Catalonia alone represents a trade turnover of more than 300 million euros.
Another country of concern to Ordig is Mexico because it has also closed the doors to all Spanish pork. Mexico’s Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Julio Berdegui, indicated that his country and Spain are seeking to resume trade flows, which were suspended in a “precautionary” manner, “as quickly as it is possible to do so” after the outbreak of African swine fever in Catalonia.
Ordig confirmed that no dead wild boars were found again in the six-kilometre-long affected area, and that they were waiting to follow EU instructions to carry out a mass slaughter of nearly 900 wild boars in Collserola Park.
He stressed that warnings had already been made of the possibility of an outbreak of the disease in Spain, because the disease is “endemic and therefore cannot be controlled” in Eastern European countries.