CEBU Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia has called on all local governments units (LGUs) across the country to unite in seeking the lifting of the policies of the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) against African swine fever (ASF) that she considers to have negatively affected the local hog industry since these were implemented in 2019.
Garcia wants other LGUs to support her in her bid to have the culling policy and color-coding restrictions of the BAI in eradicating ASF in the country lifted.
Garcia told reporters in a press conference at the Tudela Municipal Hall on Thursday, June 8, 2023 that she is considering opening the borders of Cebu Province to live hogs, boar semen, genetic materials, pork meats, pork-related products and byproducts even from regions with ASF.
This will be done through a memorandum of agreement outlining the strict biosecurity measures to be adopted upon entry.
“Cebu is ready to open its ports and airports to all local chief executives (LCE), regardless of whether they have been colored red or pink for as long as we shall enter into a memorandum of agreement where, among others, our own protocols in protecting our hog industry be adopted as well in the respective government units of these LCEs,” Garcia said.
This was her response to the plea of the local hog raisers in the Camotes group of islands that can no longer sell and transport their hogs and byproducts to Ormoc City, Leyte.
Included in the conditions are biosurveillance and monitoring in all small backyard farms of hog raisers, regular disinfection of pig farms, and isolating immediately swine that are manifesting symptoms, then conducting confirmatory testing.
Culling, color coding
The Department of Agriculture’s (DA) BAI implements the national policies in eradicating ASF, particularly the color-coding scheme that assigns colors for LGUs in ASF risk categories, and prescribes measures for the movement of swine products across the different colored zones.
Under the DA’s zone classifications, red is the infected zone, while pink is the buffer zone, which refers to the areas immediately around the red zone.
The DA’s policy is to cull all hogs within the 500-meter radius of the infected area.
Last April, Central Visayas Pork Producers Cooperative president Jonathan Young said that since 2019, when the first ASF cases were detected in the country, at least five million hogs had been culled, but only 20 percent were actually infected, putting around four million hogs to waste.
Hog deaths
Garcia was confident in saying that since March 1, 2023, when pigs in a slaughterhouse in Carcar City tested positive for ASF, Cebu had no reported massive hog deaths, contradicting the BAI’s earlier projections that it would take only weeks for hogs in infected areas to die in large numbers.
According to Dr. Mary Rose Vincoy, chief of the Provincial Veterinary Office (PVO), the Province had tested 64 hogs that manifested symptoms based on their data collected as of June 7.
Of the 64, Vincoy said, 23 were found ASF-positive while 16 were infected with Classical swine fever or hog cholera. The rest tested negative.
However those swine that died were not ASF positive.
“We have very, very simple protocols, and it has proven that these protocols have been effective. As I said, what has happened here in Cebu, where there had been no massive deaths, even if I had refused the culling policy of BAI, what has happened here in Cebu has now become an embarrassment for the Bureau of Animal Industry because they cannot answer me,” Garcia said.
The call was seconded by the president of the League of Municipalities of the Philippines (LMP) Cebu Chapter, Daanbantayan Mayor Sun Shimura, who will file a resolution with the league to convince the LGUs across the country to support Cebu in having the BAI lift its restrictions.
Shut out from Leyte
In the same press conference, Tudela Mayor Greman Solante said Ormoc City was the top consumer of backyard hogs raised in Camotes; however, the BAI policy had limited the local hog raisers’ export of their live hog and pork meats as they were banned from transporting their hogs by orders of Leyte Gov. Leopoldo Dominico Petilla and Ormoc City Mayor Lucy Torres-Gomez.
The mayors of Pilar, Poro, San Francisco and Tudela towns of the Camotes Islands joined in the call to the BAI to lift its color coding scheme and excessively stringent restrictions in the management of ASF.
This has resulted in the oversupply of live hogs in the Camotes Islands, which hog raisers were mostly forced to sell at lower farmgate prices or risk not selling their hogs due to over-aging.
In a manifesto, the mayors appealed to Petilla and Torres-Gomez to open their borders and markets to the hogs and hog products from the Camotes Islands.
Transporting their hogs to mainland Cebu costs more, and the mainland also has an oversupply of live hogs.
The mayors assured that the Camotes Islands have never had a documented case
of ASF.
“Please look at the plight of our hog raisers with understanding and humanitarian consideration, as they have been unfairly and undeservingly punished with the denial of equitable trading and commercial opportunities, which run contrary to the thrust of the Good President Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr., for national food security,” Solante said in the manifesto.
Ignored
Garcia now understands how the LGU whose hogs and pork products she banned felt.
Last March, Garcia ignored the pleas of Negros Occidental Gov. Eugenio Jose Lacson to lift the ban she had imposed on the entry to Cebu of pork and pork products from Lacson’s province, which Lacson said had affected Negrense hog raisers financially.
Garcia had issued Executive Order 9, Series of 2023, declaring a temporary ban on the entry of pork products from Negros Island, which covers Negros Oriental and Negros Occidental, even if, Lacson said, his province was free of ASF.
Garcia issued the order on March 6 after the PVO said that the pigs that tested positive for ASF in Carcar came from Negros Island.
Last March 29, Garcia sued five DA and BAI officials before the Office of the Ombudsman Visayas over their policy against ASF that had pigs that were not ill killed to stop the spread of the infection, saying it caused harm to the Cebu economy. (WITH CTL)