Spain probes whether swine fever outbreak was caused by lab leak

By Charlie Devereux and Joan Faus

MADRID/BARCELONA, Dec 5 (Reuters) - The Catalonia regional government said on Friday it would investigate a research centre outside Barcelona after Spain's Agriculture Ministry said a recent swine fever outbreak could have been caused by a laboratory leak.

Spain, the European Union's top pork producer, is trying to reassure trading partners after 13 wild boars tested positive for the virus in hills outside the city. The disease is harmless to humans but can be deadly for pigs and wild boars.

Genome sequencing by a Madrid lab showed the strain was “very similar” to one first detected in Georgia in 2007 and now widely used in research and vaccine development, the ministry said. Other cases in Europe belong to a different genetic group.

"The discovery of a virus similar to the one that circulated in Georgia therefore does not rule out the possibility that its origin may lie in a biological containment facility," the Agriculture Ministry said.

Until now, Catalan officials suspected the virus had spread after a wild boar ate contaminated food, possibly a sandwich brought from abroad by a truck driver.

"The report suggests that it is possible that the origin of the virus is not in animals or animal products from any of the countries where the infection is currently present," the ministry said.

It did not name any laboratories in its statement. But Catalonia's top agriculture official, Oscar Ordeig, said the regional government would open an investigation of the state-funded Centre for Research in Animal Health (Cresa).

The centre is located next to the Autonomous University of Barcelona and within the six-km (four-mile) confinement area imposed by authorities after the outbreak. Ordeig said other laboratories could also be investigated.

The World Organization of Animal Health in 2017 designated Cresa as a research centre into swine fevers.

The laboratory did not immediately respond to a request for comment but it told the news verification website Maldita.es it had found no evidence of being the source of the outbreak.

The "Georgia 2007" strain of swine fever spread to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia and Belarus and reached eastern EU states in 2014, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

It reached China in 2018, causing huge losses. Chinese pig meat production dropped by 27% in 2019.

(Reporting by Charlie Devereux, Joan Faus and Jesus Calero; editing by Mark Potter and Mark Heinrich)