February 16, 2010

Philippine animal health agency to bat for new mandate on reporting hog diseases
   

The Philippine Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) will propose to the next Congress a law that will make mandatory for big breeding farms to report the presence of hog diseases in their farms.

Dr. Rosemarie Antegro, chief of the National Classical Swine Fever programme under the BAI, said that if implemented, the law will make it easier for the attached agency of the Department of Agriculture (DA) to prevent an epidemic of hog diseases.

Currently, she noted that big commercial breeding farms are not compelled to notify the presence of diseases in their farms for fear that their farm will be shut down if they report presence of diseases.

Antegro estimates that there are more than 100 big commercial farms and that there are more than 1,000 small breeding farms in the country today.

The BAI conducts periodic assessments or profiling of only accredited breeding and hog farms.

Ensuring that breeding farms are free from diseases is crucial and is seen as the first line of defence in preventing the spread of hog diseases. Once a sick piglet is transported, it could infect back yard and commercial hog farms.

Making it mandatory for big commercial hog farms to report the presence of diseases is a must in this day and age, when various strains of hog diseases are emerging or mutating.

Ken Inui, a laboratory expert of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), noted the emergence of the so-called Chinese strain of the porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS), a disease that is deadly to hogs.

According to Inui, the Chinese strain was detected in 2006 and spread in China, Vietnam, and detected now in the Philippines.

The Chinese strain of the PRRS, he said, is more dangerous since there is no vaccine for it yet.
FAO representatives are currently in the Philippines to train local technicians on real-time PCR (polymerase chain reaction), a method for testing and confirming the presence of PRRS in hogs.

The PCR method will make it easier for BAI veterinarians to detect the presence of PRRS. They will no longer have to wait for word from the United States or Australia to detect and confirm PRRS.

Antegro, however, denied the presence of the Chinese strain of the PRRS.

Based on BAI's genome sequencing, she said the PRRS strain that the country has is 98 percent North American strain.

Currently, the BAI official said vaccination against PRRS and biosecurity are among the measures put in place by the agency to ensure that the hog disease is controlled.