Active cases of the African swine fever (ASF) in the country have slowed down and are now contained in 22 barangays located in eight provinces, as of August 13, the Department of Agriculture (DA) said.
This compares with the DA’s previous report last May 31 when the disease was active in 19 barangays and nine provinces.
In an online briefing yesterday, the DA said the current active cases are found in six barangays in Ilocos Norte, five in Misamis Oriental, four in Agusan del Norte, two each in Surigao del Sur and Leyte, and one each in Cagayan, Isabela and Samar.
During the briefing, Ruth Miclat-Sonaco, director of the country’s national livestock program, said ASF positive samples as of August 13 were recorded at 58, the lowest so far since August 2019’s 82.
Last month’s total positive ASF samples were at 442.
At present, the DA said 470 cities and municipalities have not reported ASF cases for at least three months; 74 cities and municipalities have no traces of the disease for three to six months; and 396 cities and municipalities are negative from the disease for more than six months.
Likewise, Sonaco said the DA provided a total of 959 sentinel pigs to raisers in Cordillera, Ilocos, Calabarzon and Bicol.
Sentinel pigs are placed in areas formerly infected with the ASF andwill be monitored for six weeks if they will show signs and symptoms of the disease. The sentinel pigs will then be tended by growers for about 40 days as the DA provides three to five sentinel hogs for each farmer affected by the ASF in a particular barangay.
Sonaco said the deployment of sentinel pigs is expected to ramp up next month as the issues on pricing of piglets to be deployed are now resolved.
The sentinel program is currently intended to be administered in 18 barangays in Cordillera, 75 in Ilocos, 93 in Cagayan, 93 in Central Luzon, 125 in Calabarzon, 56 in Bicol, 15 in Davao and 25 in Soccsksargen.
Sonaco said the government will soon release its official report on the findings of the ASF vaccine trials that were recently concluded.
“Based on our last TWG (technical working group) meeting, the research trials ended last July 30. The BAI (Bureau of Animal Industry) and the private partner will release an official report. I think the vaccine has very good (potential)… It promises a lot of things but we might still need one or two more studies before this can be rolled out commercially,” Sonaco explained.
With the current efforts of the government and the private sector to repopulate hogs, the DA expects local production of pork torevert to a surplus as early as 2023 at 474,012 metric tons (MT) and will double to 809,172 MT by 2023, reaching as much as 1.14 million MT by 2025.
Based on data from the DA’s Bantay Presyo in 11 markets in Metro Manila, as of August 18,the lowest price for frozen pork kasim is at P210 per kg with highest at P260 per kg, while frozenliempo is lowest at P260 per kg and highest at P340 per kg.
Local and fresh kasim fares the lowest at P290 per kg and highest at P360 per kg, while fresh local liempo is lowest at P320 per kg and highest at P380 per kg.
