Hog raisers in five municipalities and a city in Batangas province can now start restocking their farms and trade with more areas in the country after the Department of Agriculture (DA) officially declared the areas free from African swine fever (ASF) on Thursday.
Agriculture Secretary William D. Dar proclaimed that the city of Lipa and the municipalities of San Jose, Malvar, Rosario, Taysan and Nasugbu in Batangas had regained their “freedom status” from the dreaded ASF.
Dar made the official declaration during a ceremony at the International Training Center on Pig Husbandry (ITCPH) in Marawouy, Lipa City, Batangas.
Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) Executive Director Reildrin G. Morales said the freedom status of the six Batangas localities are in accordance with the DA’s current rules on ASF control, prevention, recovery and repopulation. With Dar’s declaration, Morales said the six localities are now officially recovered from red zones (infected zones) to pink zones (buffer zones).
“With the [ASF-free] declaration, [the ASF zoning status of the six localities are now changed] from red to pink. They can now trade within pink zones and to yellow zones. [They will have] more trade,” Dar told reporters in an interview.
“Second, they can now start repopulating. That is the other important thing of this declaration,” Dar added.
Morales added that Dar’s declaration was guided by necessary scientific procedures such as complete surveillance and monitoring, as well as “sentineling” program of the DA.
“All these exercises established scientifically the absence of the [ASF] virus in these one city and five municipalities,” Morales said during the event.
Batangas recorded its first ASF case in the municipality of Laurel last February 2020. Batangas served as the pilot area for the biosecurity measure program called “Bantay ASF sa Barangay” or BABay ASF.
Batangas is a vital pork-producing province as it serves as the No. 1 supplier of pork to Metro Manila, according to the DA. With the freedom status of the six localities, only 12 areas in Batangas remain classified as ASF-infected zones.
Batangas’s pork output reached a record-high of 189,169.38 metric tons in 2019, before ASF hit the province. Pork output in the province last year declined by almost 15 percent to 161,189.85 MT, based on Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) data.