Both Hungary and Slovakia have suggested that the current outbreaks of highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) could be linked to bioterrorism, without providing any scientific evidence, on Wednesday, the 16th of April, reports Politico.
Hungarian authorities detected a case of foot-and-mouth disease on a cattle farm near the Slovak border in early March, the first outbreak in the country in 50 years.
Since then, three more Hungarian farms and six Slovak farms have been found to have the virus in their animals, prompting the authorities to vaccinate the herds to reduce further spread of the virus before emergency culling of the animals. Slovakia has declared a state of emergency, imposed border restrictions and set up a surveillance centre staffed by police, firefighters and military forces.
“According to the knowledge I have at the moment, there is no evidence to support this scenario,” said virologist Jiří Černý of the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague, on the bioterrorism allegations.
“THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT WE SHOULD IGNORE THE POSSIBILITY OF ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATIONS, BUT THAT THEY SHOULD BE THOROUGHLY INVESTIGATED AND NOT ASSUMED WITHOUT EVIDENCE.
it also does not mean that bioterrorism is a possible explanation,” he said.
FMD is one of the most dangerous livestock diseases in the world because of its economic and trade consequences, as well as the harm it causes to animals.
It is highly contagious in ruminants such as cows, pigs, sheep and goats. Although it rarely kills livestock, it causes fever, loss of appetite and painful sores on the hooves and mouth, which can lead to the killing of an entire herd. Exclusion zones should also be established to prevent the spread of the disease.
An outbreak in the UK in 2001 led to an agricultural and tourism crisis costing more than 15 billion euros. The authorities culled more than six million animals to eradicate the disease.
Germany also reported an outbreak in January, which has since been contained.
Černý added that the virus was probably transmitted accidentally and should be treated as such until proven otherwise.
“The virus can be transmitted through contaminated footwear, clothing, equipment or even the feathers of migrating birds. Similar cases of accidental transmission have been documented in the past,” he told Politico.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Chief of Cabinet Gergely Gulyás suggested last Thursday that the recent outbreaks could be caused by a biological attack. He said that “it cannot be excluded that the virus is not of natural origin” and could be an “artificially created virus”, referring to unverified verbal information from a foreign laboratory.
Gulyás called on experts to examine the possibility of an “engineered attack”.
Slovak Agriculture Minister Richard Takáč said on Friday that Slovakia was also considering whether the recent virus outbreak could be artificial, echoing suspicions voiced in Hungary. He pointed out that similar issues were also being discussed in the European Commission.
“I can confirm that bioterrorism has been mentioned as a possible scenario in official documents following meetings at European level. That someone might have brought a virus here for a specific purpose. This is under investigation,” he said.
The Commission declined to comment on Takács’ claim, but said it was working to find out where the virus came from.
“We have no comment on that. The Commission is working closely with Member States to try to establish the origin of the outbreak. The EU reference laboratory is isolating the virus and sequencing its genome, which may help to establish its origin. We cannot speculate on timing or what the results might be,” said a Commission spokesperson.
Several countries are taking precautionary measures, including neighbouring Austria and the Czech Republic, which are stepping up border controls, and the UK, which has banned imports of meat and dairy products from the EU.
The Baltic countries, including Latvia, are also considering the possibility of some border restrictions.