Hungary raised the possibility of a “biological attack” as the cause of its first foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in over 50 years, leading to border closures and the mass culling of cattle in the northwest.
The World Organisation for Animal Health said that Hungary reported an outbreak of the disease on a cattle farm near the border with Austria and Slovakia last month.
Officials said 1000 farms across the country have been checked, with only four in the affected northwestern region returning positive results.
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“At this stage, we can say that it cannot be ruled out that the virus was not of natural origin, we may be dealing with an artificially engineered virus,” Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyas told a media briefing. He also added that the suspicion of a biological attack was based on verbal information received from a foreign laboratory — which has not yet been fully proven – and that no further outbreak has been detected.
Foot-and-mouth disease poses no danger to humans but causes fever and mouth blisters in cloven-hoofed ruminants such as cattle, swine, sheep and goats, and outbreaks often lead to trade restrictions.
