Not enough Decimated by the ASF virus, pig population has greatly diminished as there are fewer swine to deliver in a Rizal town. ROMAN PROSPERO
PANDI, Bulacan — The province of Bulacan is proving to be the ground zero of African swine fever (ASF) as 1,191 pigs were culled in the towns of Pandi and Pulilan due to the infectious disease, Mayor Enrico Roque revealed on Thursday.
He added that at the Corpus Farm in his town in Barangay Baka-Bakahan, the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the local government unit culled 191 pigs that were positive with ASF. The culling of these pigs, he said, was based on the result of the lab analysis of the blood samples taken last month.
Roque said the DA found the blood samples of these pigs owned by May Gonzales positive of ASF.
Pandi Municipal Agriculture Officer Elsie Angeles said they were already in the process of culling the pigs at Corpus Farm when Gonzales appeared on a news program, denying that her pigs were positive with ASF. Angeles also refuted the owner’s claim that the pigs were culled by crushing their heads with a backhoe.
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“The culled animals were electrocuted and not crushed by a backhoe before being thrown in a pit. Initially, a total of 114 swine were culled followed by 77 heads before the culling was stopped on the 200-sow level farm of Gonzalez and her associates,” she said.
Meanwhile, the town of Pulilan has recorded the highest number of culling with 1,000 pigs testing positive with ASF. These areas in Pulilan were identified as the villages of Inaon, Tabon, Balatong A, Balatong B, Tinejero and Dulong Malabon.
According to Mayor Ma. Rosario Ochoa-Montejo, Pulilan is now strictly implementing quarantine checkpoints for all livestock going in and out of the town. This was also being implemented in the town of Pandi.
The two mayors stressed that blood sample testing from livestock is now being done regularly with hopes of stopping the spread of the ASF in other areas of the province. The two added that they will not hesitate to cull swine that are infected with ASF since hog raising is one of the provinces’ main industry.
