The Department of Agriculture (DA) issued a new memorandum circular allowing the shipment of live domestic birds and products from Visayas and Mindanao going to Luzon amid the recent flu outbreak in San Luis, Pampanga.
Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol however clarified in a press conference that movement of all live domestic wild birds including poultry meat, eggs, chicks and manure from Luzon going to Visayas and Mindanao will still be banned as a precautionary measure.
“Inverse supply will be allowed. Visayas and Mindanao can supply for Luzon provided that this is outside the danger zone,” he added.
Movement will be allowed under conditions that the shipments will be accompanied with a permit and a veterinarian, and only dressed chickens will be allowed to enter the region, Piñol said.
As of August 9, 16,865 chickens have been culled by the BAI team, according to Dr. Arlene Vytiaco, focal person for avian flu control of the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI).
The low turnout, Vytiaco explained, is due to misinformation received by volunteers that they will be quarantined for nine days after the culling. The first team, comprised of 30 volunteers, were trimmed down to five because of it.
More than 180,000 chickens are left to be culled, which will be paid for by the DA at P80 a piece. A total of P16 million will be allotted to compensate for the chickens.
In addition, DA will also allocate P50 million for a loan assistance program for the poultry operators and owners while they are not allowed to continue production.
“We know how hard it is for the [poultry] operators, but we cannot risk the whole sector for this,” Piñol said.
A bio-security team will be created by BAI to monitor if poultry farms are following standard security measures. These teams will start going around small-scale and large-scale poultry farms “as soon as possible,” said Piñol.
Penalties to be sanctioned to farms who fail to report signs of mismanagement have not been decided yet by the agency, although the secretary said that they are already looking into it.
The DA also told the public to eat poultry and poultry products “at your own risk,” as the agency still awaits the result of the laboratory test of the flu virus sent to the Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL).
Although four laboratory tests done locally confirmed the H5 strain of the flu virus in San Luis, it would take two weeks to know whether the virus has an N7 component, which will make it transmissible to humans, Vytiaco said.
BAI disclosed that parallel testings were done by the regional animal diagnostic laboratory in Central Luzon, the animal diagnostic laboratory in BAI, the University of the Philippines Los Baños, and San Miguel Corporation (SMC).
Nonetheless, DA assured that there has been no report of any incident of animal-to-human transmissions since the outbreak.
Currently, the country is not capable to run tests to know whether the flu virus is positive to N7. Vytiaco said it will be faster to send samples to Australia than for the department to purchase its own test kit.
Twelve days since the case was reported, the DA has not also pointed out the origin of the infection yet, although Vytiaco said this will be the priority of BAI this week.
With the bird flu scare around the country, Piñol admits that this will have an impact on the agriculture performance for the third quarter, but the secretary chief failed to give an estimate by how much.
According to data provided by DA, the province of Pampanga provides 7 percent of the total broiler chickens in the country, while 18 percent of the total supply of layer chickens in the country also come from the province.
On Monday, Vitarich Corporation closed its poultry farm in Candaba, Pampanga as a precaution from the outbreak, which is 90 kilometers away from San Luis. The food unit of San Miguel Corporation also put on hold its chicken exports to Japan.
Market prices for chicken also decreased dramatically from P125-P150 per kilo to P100-P110 per kilo.