African swine fever virus (ASFV) causes fatal disease in wild and domestic pigs.
Thankfully, ASFV does not cause disease in people, but it can be economically devastating for commercial pork producers. Spain is currently experiencing an outbreak of African swine fever in wild boars, its first since 1994.
As a threat to Spain’s $10 billion annual pork export industry, local authorities are taking this outbreak extremely seriously. Yet, it illustrates a phenomenon with far higher stakes than Jamón Ibérico: risking another deadly human pandemic.
There are no current outbreaks of ASFV in France or Portugal, so the virus did not walk into Spain in a wild boar. Pigs don’t swim the Mediterranean, and, famously, pigs don’t fly. So where did the infection come from? The initial hypothesis, as implausible as it may seem, was that a wild pig ate a ham sandwich that had been discarded by a long-range truck driver. African swine fever virus can survive in processed pork, and there is ASFV elsewhere in Europe.
When the viral genetics were analyzed, the Spanish boars were found to be infected with a strain of ASFV that is a match to the Georgia-2007 strain. Significantly, this strain is the “reference strain”, used in research labs, and is not associated with current African swine fever infections in Europe.
There are five labs in Catalonia working with ASFV, including the Centro de Investigación en Sanidad Animal, just 150 meters from where the first boar carcasses with ASFV were found. Process of elimination — and common sense — says that the reference strain of ASFV escaped from the lab.
African swine fever virus doesn’t make people ill, so, apart from Spanish hog farmers, why should anyone care about this outbreak in Spain?
It has ramifications far beyond animal health. It is the clearest, although by no means the only, recent example of a pathogen leaking from a high biocontainment lab, in this case a biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) facility, the second-strictest classification.
Biosafety facilities that leak like sieves pose a clear and present danger to humanity. Despite best-laid plans, biocontainment labs are run and staffed by fallible humans, and leaks are inevitable.
The ASFV leak in Spain is perhaps the most recent, but it won’t be the last. A major global rethink in biosafety is required.
For a start, gain-of-function research, which intentionally makes pathogens more dangerous, should be banned. Other types of biocontainment work should be relocated from urban areas.
The United States has BSL-4 labs in the middle of Boston and in rural Montana, among other places. While there are potential risks with all BSL-4 labs, the one in a major city makes no sense whatsoever.
Biocontainment labs are also huge potential targets for false flag operations by adversaries. If an organization wanted to damage the Spanish pork industry, it could do so by introducing ASFV to Spain, near a research lab. This hypothetical, far from alleviating concerns about leaks, illustrates the potential for infinitely more nefarious scenarios, involving human viruses.
The lab connection to the current African swine fever virus outbreak in Spain cannot be denied. It is the only logical explanation.
We must use this as an opportunity to reform dangerous biological research for the sake of all humanity.
It will require a global effort, one in which the United States should lead by example by acting first to restrict and relocate BSL-3 and BSL-4 labs, and to tightly regulate and audit BSL-2 labs so that the same work is not simply conducted under less stringent conditions.
Continuing with the status quo risks much more than animal agriculture.
Andrew Noymer is associate professor of population health & disease prevention at the University of California, Irvine. Follow him on X @AndrewNoymer