ANGELES CITY – Hog raisers in the country have lost over P500 million to the African swine flu (ASF) and farmers put the blame on the lack of transparency and slow response of Agriculture Sec. William Dar.
“New cases are being reported in Cavite, Nueva Ecija, and Pangasinan, yet the Department of Agriculture (DA) has remained slow in containing ASF action and obscure in its investigation and plans,” Anakpawis Partylist leader Ariel Casilao said yesterday.
There are also unconfirmed reports that pigs in the area of Mabalacat City have already been affected by ASF.
Casilao lamented that “the DA is yet to shed light on how it (ASF) started or where it came from and how to prevent it. Small hog raisers just wait for their livestock to be affected.”
He noted that the DA has estimated that the average farm gate price of hogs in June was at P110.15 per kilo. “Thus, an 80-kilo hog which is the minimum live weight required by the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) could be valued at around P8,800. Consequently, the lost value from the 52,000 already culled hogs could reach to near P460 million.’”
“Around 64 percent of hogs are from backyard farms in 22 sites where the 52,000 hogs have been culled,” he added.
Casilao said “the DA claims to be carrying out its so-called 1-7- 10 protocol but still new cases occur. The protocol states that starting from the ground zero of the cases, hogs within one-kilometer radius are to be culled. Within less than two months, hog raisers, especially small backyard farmers, lost near half a billion pesos of potential income.”
He also questioned the small compensation to hog raiser victims set by the DA during the early cases. “It was at P3,000 per head until it was raised to P5,000 just last week.”
“The small compensation may had an impact on the full cooperation of hog raisers, such as those who threw their dead livestock in the Marikina River, in order to save those not yet infected,” he said.
Casilao said Agriculture Sec. William Dar “is underestimating the ASF concern. He has yet to learn from the experience of China in August last year when, despite its advanced technology, some 1.2 million hogs were culled.”
He urged Dar to “listen to his subordinate experts and break out from his posturing that he is in control of the situation.”
“His background shows he is more into pushing liberalization of agriculture and is less of a biosafety expert. He served as governing board member of the International Rice Research Institute, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, that promote products designed by foreign monopoly agro-corporations,” Casilao added.
