PHILIPPINES-6,000 PIGS CULLED AS TESTS CONTINUE.
Authorities have decided to widen the scope of the testing for the Ebola-Reston virus to cover the whole of Central Luzon and Calabarzon regions.
The agriculture and health departments authorized the wider testing after finding that the virus was continuing to be transmitted on a farm in Pandi, Bulacan, one of two farms where the Ebola-Reston was first detected last year and where an international team conducted extensive testing recently.
On Monday, the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) said testing on the two farms had been completed and confirmed that there was continued viral infection of pigs in Pandi but none on the other farm located in Manaoag, Pangasinan.
Six thousand pigs are set to be culled within the week on the Bulacan farm while the Manaoag farm is now out of quarantine.
Davinio Catbagan, BAI director, said the expanded testing in Central Luzon and Calabarzon would be completed in six months, depending on the arrival of test kits from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia.
About 36,000 test kits are needed for the two regions but the country only has 10,000 kits, Catbagan said.
"These kits can only come from the CDC and this is the first time they designed kits for pigs so we hope our need for more kits can be served," he said.
The expanded tests will cover the provinces of Aurora, Bataan, Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Pampanga, Tarlac and Zambales in Central Luzon, and Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon in Calabarzon.
The government has spent P10 million to keep the two quarantined farms in Bulacan and Pangasinan in operation. It will also indemnify the Bulacan farm where the 6,000 pigs will be culled.
Albert R. T. Lim, president of the National Federation of Hog Farmers (NFHFI), said he did not believe the culling of the pigs in Bulacan would affect the pork supply in Metro Manila.
"Anyway, we always have our hog producers in Mindanao to supply Luzon if necessary. I am more concerned about our exports although the Ebola scare also somewhat affected local demand," Lim said.