March 29, 2023

The Pork Producers Federation of the Philippines (ProPork) has urged the Philippines' Department of Agriculture (DA) and the country's Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) to adopt the Cebu provincial government's swine culling protocol strategy to reduce the impact of African swine fever (ASF), Malaya Business Insight reported.

Rolando Tambago, president of ProPork, said about five million swine in the country have been lost due to ASF, not just to infections but also to implemented protocols.

Tambago said the loss of the swine inventory was caused by BAI's existing protocol of culling even healthy swine within a 500-meter radius, which caused farmers to panic.

He said the local swine industry believes that the culling strategy undermines efforts to increase food security and fuels the spread of the disease because it encourages farmers to sell their sickly hogs out of fear of losing everything.

ProPork warned that if the culling protocol is kept up, it may result in a shortage of pork supplies and a subsequent increase in retail prices within the next two to three months. The current protocol has been enforced for more than three years.

Tambago called on the DA and BAI to take into account Governor Gwen Garcia of Cebu's "alternative approach" to cull only ill swine while saving the healthy ones, as well as conducting a significant ASF testing in the province and subjecting healthy swine to multilevel veterinary guidelines prior to slaughter.

Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority showed the Philippines produced 1.7 million metric tonnes of swine in 2021, up from 1.74 million metric tonnes the previous year.

-      Malaya Business Insight