Hungarian authorities suspect that the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak detected in the country is the result of a planned "biological attack."

As of Thursday, animal HEALTH authorities had tested nearly 1,000 farms across Hungary, with only four in the affected northwestern region testing positive.

"We can say that we cannot rule out the possibility that the virus is of unnatural origin; we may be dealing with an artificially created virus," a Hungarian official stated. The suspicion was based on verbal information received from a foreign laboratory, and its findings have not yet been fully proven and documented.

To contain the outbreak, the country was forced to slaughter thousands of livestock. Austria and Slovakia closed dozens of border crossings after the disease also appeared in southern Slovakia.