THE Philippines will close its borders to meat products from Cambodia after it confirmed its first-ever African swine fever (ASF) outbreak, the second Southeast Asian nation to be struck by the fatal swine disease.
Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol made the pronouncement on the sidelines of the 28th National Hog Convention and Trade Exhibits on Thursday.
Cambodia will join 15 other countries banned by Manila from shipping meat products to the Philippines, including Vietnam which confirmed outbreaks of ASF in hog farms last February.
However, the Bureau of Animal Industry said the Philippines is not importing meat products from Cambodia and other countries in mainland Asia due to foot and mouth disease. “We will issue the import ban today [Thursday],” Piñol said in an interview with reporters on the sidelines of the three-day event in Pasay City.
On April 3, Cambodia reported to the World Organisation for Animal Health its first-ever ASF outbreak which killed 400 hogs in a backyard farm near the Vietnam border. Cambodia has also culled 100 more hogs which are susceptible to ASF in the same farm.
‘Unhappy’
Piñol admitted that he is unhappy with the current biosecurity measures being implemented in airports and ports of entries.
He added that at present only random inspection on luggage is being conducted in airports due to lack of equipment.
Due to this, he disclosed that the Department of Agriculture has started training 40 canines to sniff out meat products brought in by tourists through hand-carried and checked-in luggage. Piñol added that the DA would deploy the initial 40 meat-sniffing dogs in airports nationwide after two months of training.
The BusinessMirror earlier reported that the DA was not able to hire meat-sniffing dogs from third party services as the canines were trained to detect bomb, drugs and medicines.
“If you are going to ask me if I’m happy with our current biosecurity measures, I’m not. We need to improve our biosecurity measures in our airports,” he said.
“If we need to add more meat-sniffing dogs, then we will add some more to ensure that illegal meat products will not enter the country,” Piñol said.