Town mayor mulls state of calamity after ASF, hog deaths

By Joseph B.A. Marzan

Mayor Jun Pacificador of Hamtic, Antique on Wednesday, June 21, said that he is preparing to place the town under a State of Calamity after the Department of Agriculture-Region 6 (DA-6) confirmed the presence of the African Swine Fever (ASF) in their town.

In his personal Facebook account, Pacificador shared the results of the convective Polymerase Chain Reaction (cPCR) tests conducted by the Regional Animal Diseases and Diagnostic Laboratory (RADDL) in Iloilo City on five blood samples from this town.

In the RADDL’s June 20 clinical laboratory report, four of the samples yielded positive results for ASF.

“We will coordinate with the proper agencies for our next steps of action. We will also release an Executive Order for the guidelines on [ASF] and we will ask to be placed under a State of Calamity because of ASF. We will seek to support hog raisers affected by this disease,” Pacificador said.

Antique Governor Rhodora Cadiao told Bombo Radyo Iloilo on Wednesday that so far, 1,300 hogs have died out of an estimated 9,000 population across Hamtic’s 22 barangays, resulting in an estimated loss of ₱11 million.

Aside from ASF, the governor also suspected swine pneumonia as a cause of the hog deaths.

Local tracing procedures pointed to 3 possible sources of the infection:

-a hog bought from Iloilo province and sold in Hamtic;

-roving veterinary company agents involved in hog vaccination and artificial insemination; and

-a recent barangay fiesta in the town where ASF-infected hogs were butchered and served to local residents.

The Antique provincial government has earmarked ₱1 million in ASF response, which also includes reinstated border controls in order to stop further spread.

The June 20 letter from DA-6 officer-in-charge Jose Albert Barrogo confirmed Cadiao and Antique provincial veterinarian Florencio Macuja of the presence of the disease there.

The following recommendations were made for Cadiao’s consideration:

• Immediate implementation of quarantine and disease control measures within the affected premises;
• Proper culling and disposal of all remaining hogs in affected areas;
• Conducting a disease investigation, especially contract tracing;
• Conducting field surveillance and sample collection in all farm households with susceptible animals within the 1-kilometer quarantine zone from the infected area; and
• Coordinating with concerned local government units and other agencies or offices for implementation of other necessary disease control measures in the areas of concern as stipulated in the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) guidelines.

Barrogo later confirmed to media on Wednesday that Antique was the last province in Western Visayas to fall to ASF, after Negros Occidental in May.

While their protocol recommends further confirmatory testing with the BAI’s Animal Disease Diagnosis and Reference Laboratory in Quezon City, the DA-6 chief says that they would most likely yield the same results and writing to the local chief executives is a practice to prevent further ASF spread.

The first cases of the current ASF spread in the region were confirmed in Iloilo province in October 2022.