(File photo)
ODIONGAN, Romblon – The Municipal Agriculture Office (MAO) here said the town is already in a “healing process” after more than four months of battling an African swine fever (ASF) outbreak.
In an interview on Thursday, municipal agriculturist Rexfort Famisaran said there has been no new infection or any active case of ASF in the municipality in recent weeks.
Famisaran noted that quarantine checkpoints that were erected in strategic roads around town in November 2023 have already been dismantled as the municipal government no longer feels that they are necessary.
He said only the quarantine checkpoint located at the Odiongan Port remains to prevent tainted pork from being shipped into the town and possibly causing an ASF reinfection.
However, the importation from adjacent provinces of live pigs, raw pork, and even processed pork is still banned in the municipality, Famisaran said.
He explained that a thorough depopulation of piggeries in affected barangays was instrumental in containing the outbreak of the disease.
All in all, he said, about 596 hogs belonging to mostly backyard pig farmers in Barangays Tuburan, Paniqui, and Progreso Weste were euthanized in the MAO’s depopulation efforts.
Famisaran, however, assured that the 126 piggery owners affected by the culling were indemnified by the MAO and concerned agencies of the national government.
“We (MAO) distributed the last of the indemnity checks earlier this week. Of course, they were in different amounts… depending on the number of pigs a farmer lost in the depopulation and the age of the pigs culled,” he said in Filipino.
He earlier said that the MAO had been paying PHP500 for every newborn piglet, PHP1,000 for every weanling (one- to three-month-old pigs), PHP1,500 for every pig being fattened, PHP2,000 for every sow, PHP2,500 for every breeder, and PHP3,000 for every pregnant sow.
On top of the cash paid by the municipal government, ASF-hit swine farmers in this town are also eligible to collect benefits from the Department of Social Welfare and Development and the Philippine Crop Insurance Corp.
“We are now working on securing our RAS (Recognition of Active Surveillance on ASF) certificates from the Department of Agriculture. This certification is a prerequisite to being able to repopulate piggeries that were subjected to the culling,” Famisaran added.
With the ban on pork importation still in effect and many piggeries still not cleared to restart operations, he said Odiongan’s consumers are still able to buy pork from local piggeries that were unaffected by the ASF outbreak.
Meanwhile, Famisaran said while his town is also experiencing the effects of the El Niño dry spell, it is more muted compared to what is being felt in nearby Occidental Mindoro, and it is not expected to be as ruinous to agriculture here. (PNA)
