The Department of Agriculture (DA) is eyeing Bohol to be the country’s dairy capital, as the government seeks to kick-start its program that aims to improve milk production in the provinces.
Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol said they are considering the Bohol island as the center of the DA’s dairy-development program because the department owns a 3,000-hectare lot—called the Ubay stock farm—in the area, which has served as a natural confinement for imported cattle.
“Added to that is the fact that Bohol is a net importer of meat, thus, the possibility of animals being shipped out of Bohol is almost zero,” Piñol said in a recent Facebook post.
Piñol said he would meet Bohol Gov. Edgar Chatto and Ubay, Bohol, Mayor Costan Reyes on December 19 to present the DA’s dairy-development program.
Benefits
“Should Bohol officials and the people accept the project, the province stands to benefit greatly, since, along with the establishment of the dairy farm in Ubay, we will ask big milk companies like Nestlé to look into the prospects of establishing a fresh milk-packaging plant in the Ubay stock farm,” Piñol said.
“The idea is to ensure that the milk produced by the estimated 5,000 head of Girolando dairy cattle would be transferred directly from the milking parlors to the fresh milk-packaging plants,” he added.
Dairy plan
The agriculture chief said the 5,000 head of Girolando dairy cattle, which the DA will import from Brazil, are expected to produce 22 million liters of milk annually.
“The project is expected to provide employment for the local people and additional sources of income for the local farmers who would be engaged in the planting of forage and in the fattening of the male offsprings of the dairy cattle,” Piñol said.
“When the dairy cattle population in the Ubay stock farm has increased, a municipality-based dairy-farming program will be introduced to the different towns of the province to be owned and operated by Bohol farmers and women, thus, turning the whole island into the dairy capital of the country,” Piñol added.
Brazilian breed
The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) has green lighted Manila’s importation of Girolando heifers from Brasilia, provided that it would follow the guidelines from the international agency, according to Piñol.
“It must be explained that while the Girolando cattle from Brazil will go through OIE-supervised quarantine procedures, the animals are coming from a country which still vaccinates against the foot-and-mouth disease [FMD],” he said.
“As Dr. Jose Osvaldo Barcos, OIE director for the Americas, emphasized, there is no 100-percent guarantee that the animals which tested negative for FMD prior to the shipment would really be free from the disease,” he added.
Piñol said he would conduct a public consultation with the people and farmers of Ubay and Bohol to explain clearly the risks of the importation program.
FMD factor
“The province will also have to agree that there should be no shipment of live animals from Bohol to other parts of the country for at least six months after the arrival of the Girolando dairy cattle,” he said.
Piñol earlier assured that the DA will see to it that live cattle to be imported from Brazil would be free from the highly contagious FMD, which usually affects cattle, pigs and sheep.
Hog raisers belonging to the Pork Producers Federation of the Philippines (ProPork) warned against lifting the ban on meat imports from Brazil, which has been accorded the FMD-free, but with vaccination status by the OIE.
They argued that importing meat products from Brazil may “endanger” the local hog sector and the country’s “FMD-free without vaccination” status.
ProPork President Erwin G. Chen told the BusinessMirror earlier that, during the term of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the government imported 2,000 head of Murad buffaloes from Brazil. More than 100 heads were found to be infected with FMD.
Experts from Argentina
Piñol disclosed that a pool of Argentinian experts would also aid the Philippines in determining which Girolando heifers to be imported.
“We will also have the assistance of Argentinian experts. They will help us select the breeding cattle to be brought into the country and they will also check if they are FMD-free,” he said.
The DA is also targeting to source fertilized cattle embryos from Argentina in its bid to boost the Philippine dairy sector. The government had crafted a five-year dairy and livestock development road map to prop up Philippine dairy production.
The importation of Girolando cattle from Brazil is part of the DA’s plan to ramp up local milk production to meet at least 10 percent of the annual domestic requirement by 2022, and reduce the country’s reliance on imports. The DA is allotting at least P1 billion for the live cattle-importation program.
“Our target is to bring in 500,000 heifers by the end of the term of the President. As to whether we will have the money to procure the cattle, the answer will largely depend on the performance of the first batch of heifers,” Piñol said.
“If the performance [of the program] is excellent, then we will be able to convince our economic managers that this program is worth the government’s investment,” he added. Based on the latest database of the OIE, the Philippines is among the 66 recognized FMD-free countries where vaccination is not practiced.
The OIE officially recognized the Philippines as a country free from FMD without vaccination in May 2015. The OIE also recognized the country as free of Peste des Petits Ruminants, a highly contagious disease affecting small ruminants, that same year.
The OIE database also shows that the state of Santa Catarina is the only area in Brazil that is recognized as FMD-free without vaccination since 2007.
Image credits: Olga Khoroshunova | Dreamstime, Jaboticaba Fotos | Dreamstime