THE Cebu Provincial Government will file a case before the Office of the Ombudsman Visayas on Tuesday, March 28, 2023, against personnel of the Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) for violating Republic Act 3019 or the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act, according to Provincial Attorney Donato Villa Jr.
The provincial government accused BAI of ordering the killing of domestic pigs in the first two barangays of Carcar City, where African swine fever (ASF) was first detected, causing Cebu’s economy to deteriorate because of its claim of an ASF “outbreak” in Cebu, despite the fact that only a few local government units (LGUs) had ASF cases.
Cebu Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia also said there was an ulterior motive for killing the local pigs.
Separately, the national pork producers association called on the national leadership of the DA-BAI to assess the effectiveness of its culling protocol as well as to look into the Cebu provincial government’s policy of culling only the sick hogs and focusing on monitoring, to mitigate the impact of ASF on the industry, or face the loss of the P260 billion Philippine swine industry.
“We are preparing a complaint against the BAI, and we are also gathering all the documents including those statements online and print to be used against them for our complaint in violation of Section 3(e) of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act. And we will be filing tomorrow at the Office of the Ombudsman,” Villa said Monday, March 27, 2023.
He added that the BAI officials were responsible for destroying the hog industry in Cebu because of their policy against the virus.
There are about 500,000 pigs in the entire province of Cebu, 200,000 of which are raised in backyards.
According to Garcia, because of BAI’s declaration, the Cebuanos became worried about their livelihood, especially when the bureau ordered to cull the pigs in Carcar.
The governor ordered a stop to any further cull of pigs in Cebu Province to deal with ASF, without prior approval from the Capitol.
“I will hold them accountable, the Bureau of Animal Industry because you have caused economic dislocation here in the Province of Cebu. More so you do not only compromise our hog industry here by scaring people that it’s no longer safe to eat in spite of the DOH (Department of Health) advisory, you have also caused untold suffering to these backyard raisers,” the governor said.
The DOH advisory said ASF is not harmful to human health.
Cebu’s hog industry is estimated to be worth P11 billion.
Earlier this month, the BAI said ASF had been detected in Carcar, Cebu City, Sibonga, Liloan, Tuburan and Bogo City in Cebu.
Kill the healthy
The governor did not understand the BAI’s strategy for stopping ASF, which has not solved the problem since ASF entered the country four years ago.
The governor questioned why no chief executives of local government units affected by the virus have opposed the BAI’s action.
“Let us kill all the healthy pigs because they might be infected with ASF, and if they got infected they will surely die. In other words, let’s kill them first so they will surely die. That’s what it was down to,” Garcia stated.
She emphasized that despite the fact that only one million of them were afflicted with the virus, BAI’s policy led to the “culling” of four million pigs across the nation, which died not because of ASF.
The governor described BAI’s move as a way to cause a shortage of pork supply in Cebu, allowing the government to import more pork meat.
Garcia was outraged when she learned that BAI is among the government bureaus that approve the importation of pork.
“This is like sabotaging our local hog industry because of the greed and corruption of some,” she said.
Garcia recalled that during a Senate hearing in January 2023, Sen. Cynthia Villar lambasted BAI officials for approving the importation of 800,000 kilos of pork despite the fact that there were enough pigs available from local hog raisers to meet the market’s demand for 1.7 million kilos of pigs.
In a statement Monday, Pork Producers Federation of the Philippines Inc. (ProPork) president Rolando Tambago said: “In 2022, the country imported 710.3 million kilograms of pork at a reduced tariff. That’s almost half of the country’s annual demand. If we fail to protect the remaining half of our local industry, there is high possibility that we will be fully reliant on imported pork and consumers will eventually suffer due to lack of food security.”
SunStar Cebu contacted BAI Director Paul Limson for comment on the governor’s announcement Monday, but received no reply. Dr. Daniel Ventura, ASF coordinator of the Department of Agriculture in Central Visayas (DA 7), also did not respond to SunStar’s text message.
Producers speak out
ProPork called the BAI’s culling protocol to address the ASF threat counterproductive.
ProPork president Rolando Tambago said the country had lost half (at least five million heads) of its swine population due to ASF; however, this was not purely because of actual infections but because of the implemented protocols.
“The BAI existing protocol of culling even healthy pigs within the 500-meter radius which caused farmers panicking contributed to this loss of the hog inventory,” Tambago said.
He said culling is counterproductive to food security, and just causes the disease to spread even more as farmers who fear total loss will be encouraged to sell out their hogs, even smuggling sick ones.
Tambago warned that if the indiscriminate culling of healthy pigs continues, a possible massive pork supply shortage could cause spikes in retail prices in two to three months.
Based on the declaration of DA 7 Regional Executive Director Angel Enriquez, Central Visayas is the only remaining and biggest pig producing region left, ProPork said.
Cebu’s protocol emphasizes culling only the sick hogs and saving the healthy ones. This involves massive testing for both ASF and classical swine fever (also known as hog cholera) throughout the province, employing more than 10,000 workers, ProPork said.
“Healthy hogs will be subjected to multi-level veterinary guidelines before slaughter,” ProPork added. (TPT, EHP, TPM)