As a government technical working group (TWG) gears up for the rollout of imported vaccines to fend off the further spread of the African Swine Fever (ASF), a legislator is optimistic that the inoculation program that will soon kick off to finally arrest the large-scale deaths of hogs and reinvigorate the local swine industry.
At the same time, Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte called on the Food and Drug Administration to speed up its registration process for the chosen imported vaccine brand from Vietnam. This, he said, to make sure that the agriculture department’s technical working group will be prepared to implement the inoculation drive nationwide as President Marcos no less announced at a hog industry event last May.
“There is no reason for FDA officials to take their own sweet time in accrediting the BAI-endorsed imported vaccine from Vietnam and allowing its commercial use, given that they had been fast enough in registering the imported vaccines that were used in our anti-COVID drive at the height of the pandemic,” Villafuerte said.
Villafuerte said the vaccine rollout that the DA’s TWG on Vaccination against ASF is set to start this June or July, as announced by the President himself,.
He said the move is expected to “reinvigorate” the local hog industry, which “continues to reel from a pork supply shortfall and the consequent market price spike despite the numerous policy measures that the DA (Department of Agriculture) and its BAI (Bureau of Animal Industry) have initiated in recent years to repopulate the domestic pig population in the face of recurring ASF outbreaks nationwide.
An animal disease with an almost 100-percent fatality rate for infected pigs and boars, the ASF surfaced in Asia in 2018 and then hit the Philippines in 2019, leading to a 50-percent drop in the domestic swine population from 13 million heads pre-ASF to 6.6 million heads in 2021.
The domestic pork inventory has continued to fall in the absence of a vaccine drive, with data from the DA-attached National Meat Inspection Service (NMIS) showing that nationwide stocks in cold storage facilities total 50,658 metric tons (MT) in mid-May 2024 or a fourth lower than last year’s 67,359 MT.
Figures from the NMIS revealed that a chunk of the inventory during the period consisted of imports at 49,899 MT. This was lower than the 64,214 MT in the previous year.
NMIS data also showed that pork stocks from local raisers fell to 758 MT, from 3,145 MT, as the ASF continued to affect domestic output.
Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), meanwhile, showed that the seasonally adjusted value of livestock output fell 1.8 percent in the year’s first quarter, with “hog as the top contributor to the contraction in the value of production during the first three months of 2024.”
Because of the continued supply shortfall, pork prices have jumped from the previous average of P250 a kilo in the market to the current P400 and above.
The Philippines is the world's tenth-largest consumer, eighth biggest producer and seventh largest importer of pork, said Villafuerte.
