May 7, 2009

                         

 

Philippine hog producers have been hit hard by a reduction in prices as consumers shift to beef, chicken, fish and other food products in the wake of the AH1N1 flu outbreak in the US and Mexico.

 

This has struck terror among hog breeders, who have been suffering a 10-percent slash in prices and the lift of pork imports from 18 countries, including US and Mexico announced by Agriculture Secretary Arthur C. Yap, only raised more problems.

 

The injury cuts deep as profit margins of producers and sellers are affected, with breeders in Negros Occidental also howling over the lack of feeds as the province bans the entry of genetically modified (GM) corn.

 

Such lifting, opposed by the Department of Health (DOH) could conceivably lead to a flurry of imports by meat processors hoping to cash in on low prices overseas on account of the flawed labelling of the AH1N1 flu as "swine flu" when the disease is actually caused by re-assortant virus from humans, swine and birds.

 

Not a single hog in both the US and Mexico has been downed by AH1N1, with the earliest of the cases coming from the US and not from Mexico. Two cases involving children were found in March, with the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP) confirming the same in April, long before any case arose in Mexico.

 

US supplies most of the pork imported by Mexico.

 

While the outbreak in Mexico has tapered off after 427 cases and 16 deaths and 160 cases in 21 US states with one death, the impact on pork-eating Philippine consumers has been great, with prices going down to the disadvantage of hog breeders.

 

Thus far, officials from both the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the DOH have not assuaged fears of an outbreak of the re-assortant influenza A virus, which has already hit South Korea and Hong Kong. Three suspected cases in Cebu are being investigated by health authorities.

 

Albert Lim of the National Federation of Hog Farmers Inc. (NFHFI) said the effect has been quite different when the country was hit by the resurrection of the Ebola Reston virus (ERV) late last year that affected farms in Pandi, Bulacan and in Pangasinan.

 

Lim said the ERV outbreak was limited and market prices of pork did not move as badly as it is now.

 

The outbreak led to the culling of 6,000 pigs in the Bulacan farm where the ERV transmission was ongoing but the quarantine in the Pangasinan farm was lifted. It took several days for authorities to eliminate the swine population.

 

Today, however, producers are howling since not a single hog farm has been affected by the AH1N1 virus and yet the market has been reacting violently, shunning pork as if the epidemic was here.

 

According to Lim, breeders in Baras, Rizal and Pangasinan have already complained about the irrational market reaction, which cuts into the pocketbooks of small breeders. Backyard raisers actually supply 70 percent of the hog market, while corporate breeders supply only 30 percent of the demand.