Containing ASF! Livestock Parks, Green Zones For Biosecure Hog Production

The recent announcement made by the Department of Agriculture that the dreaded African Swine Fever (ASF) had spread to 54 provinces over the last 4 years is a sad testament to the inability of government to handle a biosecurity problem which now threatens to wipe out the Philippine hog industry.
By now, it is clear that the unabated spread of the ASF, from the day it was first detected in Montalban, Rizal in 2019 up to today, resulted from the lack understanding of animal biosecurity and sheer incompetence of those who handled the problem.
Pointing blaming fingers at this time, however, would not help.
What is needed is a rational and strategic program which would ensure that the local hog industry would not perish and the country would not end up depending on imported pork.
Importing pork should be the last option because it was imported pork which brought in the ASF virus in the first place.
First, there must be a deeper understanding of the nature of the ASF and how it spread affecting even corporate facilities with established biosecurity programs.
The general belief is that “ASF is spread by contact with infected animals’ body fluids (and) by ticks that feed on infected animals. People are also a source of spread; as they can move the virus on vehicles or clothing.”
The first case of ASF was monitored in piggeries surrounding the dumpsites in Montalban, Rizal in July 2019 where food leftovers dumped by restaurants were saved by enterprising individuals and sold as “swill feeds” to hog farms nearby.
The first public report came out in August of the same year after veterinary officials noticed an unusual number of dead and sick pigs.
The DA under then Secretary William Dar failed to contain the spread when it did not immediately implement the biosecurity protocols established during the Bird Flu crisis in Pampanga in 2017.
The culling operations and the compensation program which would have persuaded affected farmers to surrender their hogs came late.
(Payment for the culled hogs was very low and the release of the compensation was very slow, in fact, some farmers remained unpaid until today.)
Dead pigs were seen floating in Marikina River thrown away by farmers while the more enterprising ones slaughtered pigs showing early signs of the disease and sold the meat to chorizo and other pork products makers in Bulacan.
From there, the ASF turned into a runaway train with every processed pork product stained with ASF virus distributed all over the country with the leftovers given to backyard hogs as swill feeds.
there is one enigma, however, on how the virus was able to infiltrate established hog farms, including a big corporate farm in Bulacan and here in South Cotabato.
Although there is no scientific investigation to support this theory, I believe that the spread of the virus to even the secured hog farms may have been the result of the poor handling of our locally procured feed materials, especially those yellow corn dried along national highways.
Since the ASF virus could survive heat during processing, it is a possibility that those corn grains sold to feed mills which processed these into hog feeds may have been the carrier of the virus which penetrated even the established farms.
This is a very graphic case of lack of biosecurity control in our feed processing.
So, what steps should government do now?
First, there must a study on what a Thai multinational corporation, CP Foods Philippines, is doing to protect their hog production facilities, including their poultry farms scattered all over the country.
Right now, CPF Phils. is only one of the very few corporate farms which had successfully shielded themselves from the threat of the ASF, including the Bird Flu.
I will give you an important bit of information subject to verification on how CP Foods Philippines survived this crisis.
CP Foods Philippines operates a complete system where they engage corn, and now Sorghum, farmers to produce for them exclusive, process the feed materials in their own feed mill and supply their growers with fresh feeds processed within a bioscure and safe radius.
This is a model which Government could copy by establishing Agro-Industrial Parks near the production areas of raw materials for feeds to bring down the cost of production and protect farmers from bio-security risks.
In the concept which I crafted, the Agro-Industrial Parks will have facilities for hog and poultry raising established by government which could be leased by a group or individual farmers.
The park will have complete facilities like a feed mill, waste-to-fertilizer processing equipment, abattoir and processing plants so that what comes out of the area would be ready for the market.
This strategy of elevating the production of hogs and chicken from a backyard activity to an industry level would also protect farmers from the threats of animal diseases like the African Swine Fever and Bird Flu which had greatly affected both the local poultry and hog industry.
This concept is not mine originally but something which I developed following a visit in Texas, I saw large cattle feedlots in the middle of the fields where corn, sorghum and soybeans were grown.
Beside the feedlots were grains processing facilities which turned grains and soybeans into flakes which were directly fed to the cattle nearby.
The set-up saved a lot of expenses in the transport of the feed raw materials from the production fields to the feedlots or, in the case of hogs and poultry, in the growing facilities.
This will also address the Zoning issues which had been an irritant between local government units and backyard hog and poultry raisers.
In addition to this, government must identify “Green Zones” or provinces which had so far been shielded from both the ASF and the Bird Flu and focus interventions to boost production in these areas.
These are the last remaining strategies which could be implemented to save the livestock and poultry industry and protect consumers from skyrocketing food prices.
We have to do this fast or else, we will end up chasing a runaway train again.
#KungGustoMaramingParaan!
#GovernanceIsCommonSense!