A senior legislator on Friday asked the agriculture department to provide small hog raisers free anti-African Swine Fever (ASF) vaccines when these become available in September.
Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte made the plea as he welcomed the scheduled local rollout of the Vietnamese vaccine that has been found effective against ASF.
“With an effective anti-ASF vaccine in the offing, the DA can best boost its swine repopulation program and provide help to livestock raisers reeling from ASF outbreaks and the lingering impact of COVID-19 on their enterprises, by rolling out a free immunization drive for the hogs of backyard growers, who account for a majority of our local producers,” Villafuerte said. Maricel V. Cruz
He appealed to the DA “to give the shots to local hogs at no cost to backyard raisers, given that many of them remain financially distressed owing to the negative impact of the continuing ASF outbreaks and Covid-19 on their enterprises, and are thus in no position to shoulder the extra cost of inoculation.”
Villafuerte, who has since last year advocated for free DA shots for the herds of backyard growers, reiterated his proposal after Agriculture Secretary Francis Tiu Laurel Jr. announced this week the rollout of this vaccine, initially for government use only, by September.
Laurel said the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has already approved the local use of the vaccine, and that the DA would limit the rollout for the government’s use by September and for commercial use in six months’ time after that.
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