DA: Enough pigs for holidays

The Department of Agriculture (DA) on Wednesday assured consumers that there are enough pigs for the holidays despite the African Swine Fever (ASF) problem as the scale of culling is small.

Even if the number of pigs culled out of the total population of the animal is doubled, the figure is only one percent, Reildrine G. Morales, head of Secretariat of the DA Crisis Management Team on ASF, said in a briefing in Malacañang.

Since August of this year, an estimated 70,000 pigs have already been culled out of the 12.5 million pigs in the country, he said.

The number is much less compared to Vietnam, South Korea and China.

‘Compared to Vietnam which has six million pigs culled already, and they started culling in February this year. So they are culling at a rate of 600,000 plus per month,” said Morales.

South Korea is culling its pigs at the rate of about 140,000 per month while China depopulated by about less than two million, he added.

Morales assured that the problem can be controlled, managed and eradicated for as long as the virus has no chance of spreading.

Hog raisers are losing P900 million or about P1 billion a moth due to the ASF problem, according to Morales.

Meanwhile, efforts to control and contain the spread of ASF in the country are continuing, said Morales.

Measures have been elevated, including heightened quarantine procedures, from national and local levels.

Morales stressed that only a third of the 70,000 pigs culled were infected by ASF.

‘Yun pong na-cull natin na mga baboy ay hindi po siya lahat infected with ASF (Not all pigs culled are infected with ASF). At least a third, siguro or even less ang infected with ASF,” Morales said.

Morales said base on the reports they received from the field, areas affected by the ASF were Rizal, Bulacan, Pampanga, Nueva Ecija, Pangasinan, Cavite and Quezon City and Malabon in the National Capital Region.