African swine fever could become endemic after its re-emergence in Spain due to the presence of a certain type of tick.

The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food is now fighting for countries to adopt regionalisation, as CHINA recently did , allowing the market to remain open except for products from Barcelona.

No cases of African swine fever have been detected on pig farms.

Luis Planas stated that the priority is preventing disease outbreaks on farms, which would require the culling of the entire pig population. "We are very well coordinated to prevent this," he said.

He also emphasized that the industry is prepared to contain the spread of the disease, as biosecurity measures have already been implemented, and this is not a new situation. Authorities are currently working to isolate all farms affected by the outbreak and have purchased wild boar repellents to reduce the risk of wild boar coming into contact with pig farms, Infobae reports.

Nine cases of African swine fever have been confirmed in Spain, all in wild boar and in the same area, in the municipality of Cerdanyola del Vallès (Barcelona).

Therefore, restrictions and prohibitions remain in effect in the province, and official Catalan veterinary services have established a control and surveillance zone with a radius of 20 kilometers. This zone is divided into a high-risk zone (6 kilometers) and another covering the remaining 14 kilometers. Hunting is prohibited in both zones to prevent wild boar from moving into disease-free areas.

In addition, as the Ministry of Agriculture explained yesterday, search and rescue operations and capture have been intensified in the buffer zone (14 kilometers) in order to reduce the population density of these wild animals, and access zones to the contaminated area have been designated.

Catalonia has lost its African swine fever ( ASF )-free status and will not regain it until 12 months have passed since the last new outbreak was detected. "The wild boar population is growing, and the possibility of the disease becoming endemic after its re-emergence cannot be overlooked."

The Minister of Agriculture , Fisheries and Food, Luis Planas, has assured that he will make every effort to minimize the economic impact of the detection of African swine fever (ASF) in Spain on pork exports.

This is explained by the fact that African swine fever (ASF) is a highly contagious virus , and by the fact that ticks of the genus Ornithodoros spp. may play a role in the southwestern region of the Iberian Peninsula. In fact, in the affected Eastern European countries, wild boars, even without the presence of ticks, are the cause of outbreaks of the disease, playing a significant role in its spread in the region.

The Department of Agriculture's document states that winter creates an additional risk of infection because the lack of scavengers and low temperatures mean that dead wild boar carcasses are more likely to "stay in the field for extended periods, continuing to serve as a source of infection for piglets the following spring."