The Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) said hog repopulation efforts have resulted to a higher inventory of hogs at 9.8 million heads compared with January 2021’s 9.1 million heads.
Reildrin Morales, director of the BAI, said in an online briefing on Tuesday the increase was mainly attributed to the private sector’s efforts to repopulate.
Morales said focus is now given to breeder hogs although supply challenges persist. This is because countries affected with African swine fever (ASF) are also repopulating their hog inventory.
Morales said as of January 13, active cases of ASF in the country were contained in 45 barangays located in 9 provinces.
The is an increase from BAI’s advisory last month when active cases were contained in 39 barangays in 9 provinces.
Morales said current active cases are found in 23 barangays in Marinduque; six in Quezon Province; five in both North Cotabato and Agusan del Sur; two in Cagayan; and one each in Batangas, Northern Samar, Davao del Sur and Davao de Oro.
Morales added for the same period, 36 municipalities were already released from ASF quarantine; 435 cities and municipalities with no reported case for over 180 days; 88 cities and municipalities with no reported case for 90 to 180 days; and 553 cities and municipalities with no reported case for at least 90 days.
The Department of Agriculture (DA) said with government and private sector initiatives to repopulate hogs, local production of pork will be back to a surplus as early as 2023 at 474,012 metric tons (MT) and will be doubled to 809,172 MT by 2023 and as much as 1.14 million MT by 2025.
Based on data from the DA’s Bantay Presyo in 13 markets in Metro Manila, as of yesterday, prevailing price of kasim is at P340 per kg while liempo is at 380 per kg.
