The Department of Agriculture's (DA) plan to procure 600,000 doses of African swine fever (ASF) vaccines is inadequate to curb the spread of the viral disease, which has been highly monitored for a possible outbreak. 

Agap Partylist Rep. Nicanor Briones, who is also the head of the farmers' group Pork Producers Federation of the Philippines, made the projection on Sunday in light of the government's upcoming vaccine rollout scheduled for the first week of September.

"Our pig population in the whole country is almost 10 million [and] 10 percent of that is 1 million. So, the 600,000 doses are not enough here in the province of Batangas alone," Briones said in Filipino in an interview. 

ASF is a highly contagious viral disease of farm-raised and wild pigs with a 100 percent mortality rate. It has continued to spread across Asia, including China, Vietnam, and Korea. 

The Philippines had its first ASF outbreak in 2019, and the Bureau of Animal Industry reported that nine provinces still had active ASF cases as of July 2024.

The DA has allocated P350 million to purchase 600,000 doses of ASF vaccine, and it will start to roll out the initial 10,000 hogs vaccination in Lobo, Batangas, the "ground zero" of the ASF outbreaks.

According to DA assistant secretary and spokesperson Arnel de Mesa, Lobo and Calatagan would be the first municipalities in Batangas province to be covered by the immunization program as they were the first to declare a state of calamity due to the outbreak.

However, Briones emphasized the urgent need for a hastened vaccine rollout so that ASF could no longer spread in the nearby provinces. 

"Since these 10,000 [doses] are minuscule, the 150,000 doses should also arrive immediately and if possible, all of the 600,000 [vaccines] that they will initially procure so that they can go to places with [ASF] outbreaks and that they could vaccinate the [pigs] without ASF disease," the lawmaker said in the vernacular.

Briones, chairperson of the House Committee on Cooperative Development, confirmed that the DA's vaccine subsidy program is merely intended for piglets and fatteners. Due to the limited supply, each hog would receive one dose of the vaccine instead of two.

The government, according to Briones, has to shell out a total of P3.6 billion to vaccinate the 10 million pigs nationwide.

On top of that, he said another P10 billion will be needed set aside for livestock and poultry.

The DA, which incurred a whopping P300 billion cut in the 2025 National Expenditure Program, intends to allocate P32 billion for livestock.

"That's what we see as the key to really stop the spread of ASF and to prevent the bird flu. Because when we went through the bird flu, 10 million chickens died and we don't want that to happen again," he said.

Earlier, DA Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel turned down calls to declare a state of calamity at the national level, contending that proactive measures are in place, including checkpoints to control the release of hogs from ASF-infected areas.