Philippines-Pig disease has scientists baffled.

PHILIPPINES-PIG DISEASE HAS SCIENTISTS BAFFLED.

The recent reappearance of the Ebola Reston virus (ERV) in hogs and the infection of four hog farm workers and a slaughterhouse laborer in Pangasinan, Bulacan and Valenzuela City have raised an alarm about the quality of local pork and pork products at a time when the country has been seeking deeper penetration of the global food market.

By finding ERV in backyard farms, observers noted that there should be a deeper study on the epidemiology of the virus, which is unique to the country and appeared in 1989 among crab eating monkeys raised in Ferlite Farms in Laguna and exported to the Hazleton Laboratories in Reston, Virginia.

Nearly 20 years after it was discovered among monkeys, the virus managed to jump to hogs and eventually infected humans through direct contact, which was similar to what happened to the handler of monkeys in Ferlite Farms.

The hog industry is valued at P150 billion and employs directly hundreds of thousands of people and thousands more in ancillary industries.

In Bulacan alone, 90 percent of the farms are operated by companies and the rest by individual households.

However, the ratio is 70 percent backyard and 30 percent commercial.

Luckily, international health experts found out that workers had developed the necessary antibody to protect themselves.

They were never ill nor did they show any indication that their lives were at risk in the past six months.

Thus far, the experts concluded that ERV is not a threat to humans but advised that those eating pork must cook the meat well.

Unlike the Ebola strains that had killed hundreds, if not thousands of people in Africa, ERV apparently has not mutated in the past 20 years to defy antibiotics and other drugs designed to kill virulent viruses.

Dr. Fernando Melendres, a leading cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon who also did work on indigenous medicines to battle the bacillus that causes tuberculosis, says speculations that ERV could potentially affect humans said curtly: "Don’t bother with it. People may panic at an imagined danger, It has never happened."

However, a thorough epidemiological study is necessary to know exactly how the virus evolved among monkeys and how it eventually wound up in hog farms in Bulacan, Pangasinan, Valenzuela City and a slaughterhouse also in Pangasinan.

Thus, far only two hog farms have been quarantined and an official of the Department of Agriculture (DA) say the ban on the movement of hogs in these places might soon be lifted since no animal has shown any illness or symptom of ERV infection.

Only through such study is it possible to understand how the virus became so durable as to resurrect itself in this fashion two decades after it was discovered in the US.

Nevertheless, Dr. Davinio Catbagan, chief of the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI), says this study requires the exact source of the virus to be determined, whether it was introduced by mosquitoes, rats or other sources.

Sanitation, water sources and waste facilities must likewise be inspected and subjected to scientific scrutiny.

Catbagan adds that it is still not clear whether the infection was transmitted from hog to hog and stresses that until such time that the US Center for Animal Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia determines that the blood samples and tissues sent to them from the two farms are free of ERV, strict monitoring must be imposed.

The monkeys sent to the US in 1989 purportedly also came from Cebu and other provinces and scientists must do well to recognize that ERV could affect the multibillion-peso backyard hog industry.

To eliminate contamination following the discovery of the ERV in the US from these monkeys, all the monkeys in Ferlite Farms were killed.

Estimates vary but the hog industry, and consequently the food processing industry, depends on backyard piggeries for much of their requirements.

To monitor tens of thousands of personnel manning these piggeries, government should be ready to spend a fortune, otherwise ERV contamination, along with the outbreak of the salmonella virus in Samar, could wreak havoc on food production.

Larger hog farms in Baras, Rizal and those operated by food conglomerates may be able to employ veterinarians and animal health experts on a regular basis but backyard operators do not have the same kind of resources as their bigger counterparts.

It has been noted that sick hogs oftentimes become fine repast for crocodile farms operating near giant hog breeders.

Thus, the responsibility falls on the Department of Agriculture (DA), particularly the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) under director Davinio Catbagan, who has been lecturing in Bulacan and other provinces in Central Luzon precisely on the ERV infection.

Catbagan adds that checkpoints are still standing on roads leading to the metropolis not only to prevent the entry of ERV-infected hogs but also those that may be affected by the foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) or other ailments.

Hogs not checked by the National Meat Inspection Service (NMIS) also run the risk of being seized by the DA and law enforcement agencies.

So far, quarantine has been imposed on the infected farms and the news about ERV resurgence has not affected the market, with pork prices not retreating a bit.

DA and BAI are busy coordinating with the local government units (LGUs) on how to maintain the quarantine and prevent the transport of the affected hogs until the outbreak is controlled and the presence of ERV eliminated.

Talk about importing more pork and pork products on account of the ERV infection had been rife but no one has gone to the extent of championing the importation of frozen pork products to the detriment of local producers.

In sum, ERV infection has been localized and might be over sooner than expected.