Hungary says source of foot-and-mouth could be ‘biological attack’

STORY: Hungary on Thursday suggested a “biological attack” as a possible source of the country’s first foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in more than half a century.

The outbreak has triggered border closures and the mass slaughter of cattle in the northwest.

Hungary reported the disease’s first case on a northwest cattle farm near the border with Austria and Slovakia last month, the World Organisation for Animal Health said, citing Hungarian authorities.

Four other cases have been found after checks were made at nearly 1,000 farms across Hungary.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff Gergely Gulyas told a press conference the source is still unknown.

“There is an ongoing investigation about how this infection got to these farms. 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.”

He said the suspicion was based on verbal information received from a foreign laboratory and that their findings have not yet been fully proven and documented.

Hungary constitutes 1.2% of the European Union’s total cattle stocks, official statistics showed.

But no major changes have occurred to the population compared to last year’s figures.

Thousands of cattle had to be culled as the landlocked country tried to contain the outbreak.

For those affected by the virus, like farmer Paul Meixner, he says the culling of 3,000 of his stock has cost him over four million dollars.

He says his family still cannot grasp how it happened and their work of 20 years is gone.

But he vows to rebuild.

Foot-and-mouth disease poses no danger to humans but causes fever and mouth blisters in cattle, swine, sheep and goats.

Outbreaks often lead to trade restrictions.

Austria and Slovakia have closed dozens of border crossings, after the disease also appeared in the southern part of Slovakia.