DIGOS CITY, Davao del Sur, Philippines — Barely a week after Davao City completed the culling of thousands of pigs in two barangays in Calinan District, new cases of African swine fever (ASF) infection were found among pigs in a neighboring village.

Noel Provido, spokesperson of the Department of Agriculture (DA) in Davao region, said authorities were still trying to contain the spread of the virus as new cases emerged in areas outside the first source of the outbreak.

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On Sunday, February 23, agriculture workers and personnel started the culling of close to a thousand pigs in five sitios of Inayangan, a village in Davao City’s Calinan District which shared a border with one of the two initial villages where the city’s first infection was found.

Blood samples from the affected pigs in Inayangan confirmed the presence of the ASF virus, about a week after the Davao City Veterinarian completed the culling of a total of 2,000 pigs in the villages of Dominga and Lamanan, Provido said.

“The culling is very important to prevent the virus from spreading to other places,” he said.

The Davao City Council placed the village under a state of calamity early this week and had approved the P32.29 million request from the Davao city mayor’s office to help affected hog raisers.

Provido said that aside from the P5,000 indemnification payment from DA for every hog culled, 90 affected hog raisers in Inayangan would also get financial aid from the Davao city government.

Inayangan shares a border with Barangay Lamanan where the first ASF outbreak in Davao City was first reported in late January. But the infected pigs in Barangay Lamanan were traced to have come from Davao Occidental and were traded in the livestock auction site in Sulop town, Davao del Sur, where they were bought, agriculture officials earlier said.

Provido said affected hog raisers had, so far, agreed to have their pigs culled as a measure to contain the virus and prevent it from decimating the entire hog industry in the region.

In nearby Kiblawan town, the local government urged hog raisers in the town’s 30 villages to slaughter their pigs as soon as possible and sell these in the local market before ASF infection could take hold in the town.

Kiblawan town Mayor Carl Jason Rama made the call during an inter-agency meeting here as 10 of the Kiblawan villages within the seven-kilometer radius from Sulop town’s affected villages were placed on lockdown for possible contamination of the virus.

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Rama, who created the municipal Task Force against ASF, asked hog raisers to cooperate as the local government was only implementing measures to save the local hog industry.

The 10 Kiblawan villages of Poblacion, Latian, Dapok Pocaleel, Pasig, San Isidro, Balasiao, Bonifacio, Bacaca and San Pedro were put on lockdown since these villages were within a seven-kilometer radius from Barangay Laperas and Palili in Sulop, Davao del Sur, where ASF infection had been confirmed and the depopulation of contaminated hogs

was still ongoing.

Authorities have also put up quarantine checkpoints at the entry and exit points to these villages.

“I am appealing to everybody. We must brace against ASF because this will really affect our hog industry,” Rama said.

He told raisers that their hogs could still fetch a higher price than what the DA was offering if they would slaughter them as soon as possible and sell them in the local market at P150 a kilo.

“Because of the lockdown of other local government units you are not allowed to sell it outside our town,” Rama said.

Rama also advised all breeders to stop their operations now that the government had temporarily discouraged hog raising because of the raging ASF infection.

“ASF is a serious problem and we still do not know when it will be totally eradicated,” he said.

Haide de Asis, municipal agriculture officer, also told livestock owners to keep their goats a distance away from where they keep their pigs to prevent possible contamination.

/atm

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