Blood samples taken from pigs in a southern province of the Philippines, the world’s 10th-largest pork consumer, have tested positive for African swine fever, the Philippine Department of Agriculture said yesterday.
It was the first reported case of African swine fever in Davao Occidental province and elsewhere in Mindanao, the southern island of the Philippines.
Philippine Secretary of Agriculture William Dar has ordered regional department officials to restrict the movements of animals in that part of the archipelago, the department said in a statement.
The Philippines, also the world’s seventh-biggest pork importer, reported its first African swine fever outbreak in September last year in some backyard farms near the capital, Manila.
The disease quickly spread to other parts of the main island of Luzon, including Manila, prompting some central and southern provinces to ban pork and pork-based products from disease-hit areas.
Pork smuggled from China, where millions of pigs have been culled because of the disease, could be behind the outbreak in the Philippines, Dar said.
Although the blood samples from pigs in Davao Occidental had already tested positive for African swine fever, further tests were to be undertaken by the Bureau of Animal Industry for confirmation.
The department said that the initial tests covered blood samples from more than a dozen villages in the province.
The provincial government has already imposed a “complete, but temporary, lockdown,” prohibiting the transport of pigs and pork products from and into Davao Occidental, it said.
“Backyard pig farmers in the area practice group rearing of hogs, from different owners, most [of them without] proper housing provisions nor biosecurity practices,” the department said.
There is also no regular vaccination, vitamin supplementation and deworming of pigs in the province, and household butchering is common, especially with animals exhibiting weakness or disease, it said.
About 1,000 pigs in Davao Occidental have been culled amid the outbreak, local media reported, citing information from the provincial government.
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