The Department of Agriculture (DA) has issued a special order (SO), creating a technical working group (TWG) that will lead the review, revision and updating of the national program to prevent and control African swine fever (ASF) to keep it in line with the latest scientific discoveries and technologies.
The SO 551 series of 2025, signed on April 3, 2025, but was only made public on Wednesday, April 9, said that the functions, duties and responsibilities of the TWG included the provision of technical expertise on ASF epidemiology, diagnostics, movement, prevention, control and eradication.
The TWG will lead the actual review of existing guidelines, strategies and protocol while recommending possible amendments aligned with current local and and international guidelines, the DA said
The order states that TWG members will draft and revise technical guidelines, standards and recommendations for ASF intervention and assist in the development of the ASF program operations manual.
Under the SO, all expenses relative to the preparation of operations manual will be chargeable to the National ASF Prevention and Control Program Funds and other Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) funds, subject to fund availability, and existing government accounting and auditing rules and regulations.
Dr. Christian Daquigan, the BAI officer-in-charge director who will chair the TWG, said the DA ordered the updating of the ASF control and prevention protocols and manual to keep in tune with recent knowledge and discoveries that have surfaced since the ASF manual was first drafted in 2020.
“There was no specific trigger. We just thought this is the right time to review the program as this has started way back in 2020. We want to review and apply what we have learned so far, since it was first implemented,” he explained.
Last March, DA Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. said the DA would come up with a roadmap to restore the country’s hog population back to the 14-million level before the country was hit with the ASF in 2019.
He said the target would be to produce an additional 2 million hogs annually until 2028 from the current 8 million.
Tiu Laurel said then that two large commercial hog producers have already committed to each produce half a million more heads of hogs starting 2026.
The Pork Producers Federation of the Philippines previously said the losses of the hogs industry due to the African Swine Fever have exceeded P200 billion since the first outbreak in 2019.
Based on DA’s monitoring of public markets in the National Capital Region on Tuesday, the prevailing price of pork ham ranged from P335 to P400 per kg; pork belly from P345 to P460 per kg; frozen kasim from P225 to P290 per kg; frozen liempo from P290 to P350.
