The Department of Agriculture finally heeded stakeholders’ request on the creation of a task force to control the spread of animal transboundary diseases such as African swine fever (ASF) and bird flu.
In a special order, the DA constituted a Special Task Force on Animal Health responsible for the prevention and control of emerging transboundary diseases. The group is tasked to coordinate with the Department of Interior and Local Government to craft the necessary solutions to harmonize guidelines of the national and local government units.
It will collaborate with the Department of Health, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Department of Trade and Industry, DILG and Philippine National Police to form the inter-agency task force for the detection, monitoring, surveillance, prevention, and control of animal diseases.
The panel will work with the DOH and DENR to implement the proposed Pandemic Fund and Livestock Infrastructure Modernization and Enhancement Program. It is also assigned to monitor the prices and level of production for livestock and poultry commodities.
The United Broiler Raisers Association (URBA) had earlier requested a task force be organized on handling disease outbreaks as “there is no inter-department planning for worse scenarios.”
To date, African swine fever is active in five provinces and five regions, based on Bureau of Animal Industry data as of May 10. Moreover, a separate BAI tally showed that cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza were recorded in two provinces as of June 9.
ASF was first detected in the Philippines way back in 2019. It must be noted that while it is a global phenomenon, its impact on our country has been longer and more destructive, and for that, most of the blame can be placed squarely upon government’s shoulders. That an interagency task force to control the spread of animal transboundary diseases such as ASF and bird flu was created more than three years after the ASF outbreak was first declared, gives us a clue why the disease has wreaked so much havoc on the country’s swine industry.
If this special task force had been created earlier, perhaps Negros Occidental, which until recently, had successfully fended off ASF, could’ve been spared from its potentially destructive effects. Now that ASF has been confirmed in our province, we can only hope that this new special task force can do its job well enough to finally stop the spread of ASF.*
