Spain on Monday deployed more than 100 troops to help contain an outbreak of African swine fever outside Barcelona that has sparked fears for the country’s powerful pork export industry.
They are joining 300 Catalan regional officials deployed in the Collserola Natural Park, where two dead boars that tested positive for the disease were found last week, Spain’s first such cases since 1994.
The 117 officers from the army’s emergencies unit would carry out “work with drones, disinfection, prospection, search and removal of animals”, the Catalan regional government’s agriculture minister Oscar Ordeig told a news conference.
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The authorities have restricted access to the park and are studying another eight potential cases that were found within a primary six-kilometre (four-mile) radius, said Ordeig.
Experts believe the virus may have arrived from a contaminated sausage transported by road and consumed by a boar, but the theory is unconfirmed, Ordeig added.
READ MORE: Everything to know about the African swine fever outbreak in Spain
Swine fever does not affect humans but is highly contagious and lethal for pigs. Any spread of the disease to farms could seriously harm the world’s third-largest producer of pork and pork derivatives.
Spain exports almost three million tonnes each year to more than 100 countries, but Agriculture Minister Luis Planas has said a third of them have halted imports as a safety measure.
Speaking from Italy on Monday, Planas asked citizens for “calm” regarding the consumption of pork and “prudence” to prevent the disease from spreading to farms.
African swine fever is also present in the Baltic states and eastern Europe, where it arrived from Russia in 2014.
