The Philippines is among the developing countries with a large pig industry that got hit by the African Swine Fever or ASF. In terms of inventory, its pig herd fell by about 3.08 million heads in the first quarter last year from a level of 13.8 million in 2020. The sharp drop reflected higher pig mortality due to ASF or possibly other causes, culling to contain the spread of the virus, or their owners accelerated harvest to cut down their respective financial losses to ASF.
The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) describes the ASF to be a highly contagious hemorrhagic disease of domestic and wild pigs. Infected animals will have “high fever, loss of appetite, hemorrhages in the skin and internal organs, and death in two to 10 days on average.”
Available data indicates that the Philippines is not out of the ASF woods yet. Local pork supply is estimated to be 1.247 million metric tons this year, down from 1.608 million tons at the start of the ASF outbreak. Because of the expansion of pork demand following the recovery of per capita income growth at the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, one analysis which made use of data from Philippine Statistics Authority, Trade Map, GIRA (2020), and World Bank placed the pork deficit this year at nearly half a million metric tons this year (see Figure 1).
I take up this problem not just to estimate the amount of pork which the country must import to lower pork prices and thus help curtail inflation from its current level of 6.9%, but more to explore how we may expand local pork production by addressing the ASF problem.
The ASF virus is still in this country, and we don’t know where and when the virus would claim the good health or lives of pigs. There is no medicine for it and ASF vaccines are still being developed.
GIRA (2020) claimed that nearly half of pork would be lost because of ASF, with backyard farms losing 30% and commercial farms 36%. Before ASF, 60% of our pig industry was backyard, indicating that smallholder farms got hit by the disease relatively more than commercial farms. This leaves the industry with more commercial farms surviving (56%).
The disease hit hardest in the island of Luzon, particularly Central Luzon and Calabarzon, which happen to be the country’s top two regional pork producers, servicing the country’s largest pork market, which is the National Capital Region.
What has the government done to address the ASF problem?
The Department of Agriculture (DA) has been implementing its INSPIRE program. The program aims to restore the livelihoods of ASF-affected small-hold swine raisers, produce quality and genetically superior breeder stocks and finishers, intensify and modernize the production environment in the ASF-free zones, and implement strict biosecurity protocol.
The program identifies ASF virus-related zones: red zones for areas with farms found to have ASF, and pink zones separating the red from ASF-free areas, dubbed as green zones. In red zones, the DA destroys animals that are sick with ASF and restricts the movement of animals and related products in the pork value chain in it to control the spread of the virus (see Figure 2).
Red zones become pink by going through a cleaning, disinfecting, and bioassay process lasting about 60 days to clear the area of the virus. Once completed the program introduces sentinel pigs into the area and if they survive, the red zone is declared to be pink zone. After a given period without the virus, the area graduates to become a green zone.
Let me make a few observations. Surveillance of the virus is largely reactive. Biosecurity officers of LGUs surveille the area weekly to observe clinical signs of the disease, such as sudden death or animals with fever. They report these signs to the Province Veterinary Officer, who would organize a task force to undertake a disease investigation to confirm the presence of the virus. Once confirmed, the area of about 500 kilometers from ground zero is declared a red zone and animals may be culled and products derived from the swine are restricted to only within the area.
To confirm the presence of the virus, biological samples are moved from the affected areas to animal disease diagnostic laboratories, which have RT-Polymerase chain reaction (RT PCR). OIE prescribes that confirmation be done using RT PCRs. This can spread the disease to other areas.
There are 12 regional animal disease diagnostic laboratories (RADDL), one ADDL for the NCR, and seven private laboratories. With ASF, this forms a bottleneck and raises the cost of trading pork or live pigs. Private commercial farms are complaining about the fees charged by these laboratories, which are reportedly at P35,000. Small hold farmers would not have the incentive to comply with the regulation with only the few heads that they produce. Furthermore, the owners must wait five to seven days for the results. The lag time can cause the spread of the virus in affected areas.
ONSITE SCREENING USING MINI-PCRSTo address this weakness of the surveillance system, authorities must allow onsite screening using a mini-PCR and testing kits. Biosecurity officers conduct onsite screening, say twice a month. This device can tell the officers the presence or absence of the ASF virus in less than a day (see Figure 3).
The device costs about $3,000, doesn’t require air conditioning nor refrigeration. It is ideal to be used in the field. The good part of it is that once the sample is found to be without the ASF virus, authorities should allow the owners to market their products, reducing transactions costs.
Only the samples with positive findings are then brought to animal disease diagnostic laboratories for confirmation, as ordered by the OIE.
There is more. The device can collect DNA from the infected sample, and biosecurity officers would only transport the extracts without risk of spreading the disease.
The current surveillance system is seemingly regulating the industry blindly for the following reasons. One, using clinical signs of the disease is ineffective in animals that are asymptomatic. Two, the high cost of confirming the presence of the virus and the lag time for the results are disincentives to getting the presence of the virus in the products confirmed. Three, authorities would not be able to find out if samples from healthy animals are substituted for samples from animals with the disease.
I doubt if the industry could ever escape from ASF without strengthening its surveillance system. INSPIRE’s green zones after successful sentinel procedures remain vulnerable to the disease. The program, by the way, is focused on helping small-hold farmers. Commercial farmers are assumed to take care of themselves. The INSPIRE program is more likely to succeed in repopulating the pig industry faster if it helps commercial farm owners.
These businesses can take care of themselves. But they are not incentivized to invest in new stock because of ASF. They, too, are blind without the capability to do onsite screening themselves using mini-PCRs. Of course, they can buy and do onsite screening but if the authorities do not allow onsite screening using accredited PCRs, the devices have less commercial value to them.
If authorities accept the negative finding using onsite screening with mini-PCRs and permit owners to market their products, this innovation in the surveillance system could encourage more investments by commercial farmers. One big commercial farmer in Batangas said that it is very risky to make an investment with his farm surrounded by small-hold farms. He said he is willing to donate mini-PCRs to clusters of small-hold farms to protect his farm from being infected with the disease.
Ramon L. Clarete is a professor at the University of the Philippines School of Economics.