Last month, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAPA) ordered the confinement of all poultry farms that raise their birds outdoors in Spain for the prevention and control of the spread of avian influenza which led to a spike in the price of poultry and eggs. And now, with everyone planning their festive grocery shopping, the outbreak of swine flu currently affecting Catalonia could have a direct impact on the price of pork in the Balearics in the run-up to the Christmas holidays.
On Monday, the central government, the Catalan regional government and representatives of the pig sector will meet in Madrid to analyse the situation arising from the swine fever outbreak. However, it will not be until Wednesday that the state executive holds a formal meeting with the autonomous communities, at which point possible measures could be implemented, according to the Balearic Government.
In Mallorca, to date no cases of the disease have been detected, but the sector remains on alert for the possibility that the outbreak could affect the archipelago. This is according to Martí Solivelles, president of the Pollensa farmers’ cooperative, who warns that the situation in Catalonia - where the outbreak currently affects wild boars, although there are fears that it could spread to domestic pigs — is already causing uncertainty among island producers.
Solivelles explains that Mallorca exports around 1,000 pigs a week to Catalonia, a key trade flow for market balance. If the government decides to restrict the entry and exit of livestock to this autonomous community, Mallorcan production would have to be absorbed entirely within the island, which would alter the usual prices. ‘If we cannot export, all the goods would remain here and that would affect the price, which already tends to rise at Christmas,’ he warned.
The sector fears that a sudden oversupply or a trade blockade resulting from health measures could lead to significant variations in the cost of pork, a product that is in high demand at this time of year.
While awaiting the decisions to be made this week in Madrid, farmers and cooperatives insist on remaining vigilant and preparing alternative scenarios for a Christmas season that could be marked by the evolution of the outbreak in Catalonia.
Spain's military was deployed on Monday to contain an African swine fever outbreak near Barcelona which officials suspect may have been triggered by a wild boar eating contaminated food such as a sandwich, sparking a chain of events now disrupting the country's multibillion-euro pork export industry. Spain confirmed on Friday that two wild boar found dead in Collserola park, 21 km (13.05 miles) from Barcelona, had tested positive for the disease, prompting the establishment of a 6-km exclusion zone around the affected area in Bellaterra. Authorities are currently analysing more suspected cases in the area and expect additional positives.
“The most likely option... is that cold cuts, a sandwich, contaminated food, could end up in a bin – we have to take into account that Bellaterra is an area with a lot of traffic from all over Europe – and then that a wild boar would have eaten it and become infected,” Catalonia’s agriculture minister Oscar Ordeig told Catalunya Radio on Monday.
African swine fever, while harmless to humans, spreads rapidly among pigs and wild boar, posing a significant economic risk to Spain, one of the world's largest pork exporters. The infected area is close to the AP-7 highway, a major transport route linking Spain and France. Ordeig said the absence of infected wild boar elsewhere in Catalonia and France suggests human transportation of contaminated food could have introduced the virus.
Efforts to control the outbreak intensified on Sunday, with 300 Catalan police and rural agents deployed, followed by 117 members of Spain's military emergency unit UME on Monday. Spain's agriculture minister Luis Planas said Saturday that about one-third of the country's pork export certificates have been blocked as a result of the outbreak, though no farms have been affected so far. Pork farms within a 20-km radius of the initial infection site are facing operating and sales restrictions