African swine fever spreads to Philippine capital Manila

By Enrico Dela Cruz
MANILA, Sept 20 (Reuters) - Blood samples from pigs in
backyard farms in the Philippine capital Manila tested positive
for African swine fever, the Department of Agriculture said on
Friday, less than two weeks after it declared the country's
first outbreak of the disease.
The Bureau of Animal Industry has tested and confirmed the
African swine fever virus in blood samples from two areas in
Quezon City, a part of Metro Manila, said the agriculture
department's spokesman, Noel Reyes.
The Philippines, the world's 10th-largest pork consumer and
seventh-biggest pork importer, declared its first outbreak of
the virus on Sept. 9, after detecting swine deaths and culling
more than 7,000 pigs in towns in Rizal province, east of Manila.
There are also other areas being closely monitored by the
agriculture department, Reyes said.
"We have received incident reports and we're validating
them," Reyes told Reuters, saying the incidents involved pig
sickness and deaths in some areas.
He declined to give further details.
There is no cure or vaccine for the deadly and highly
contagious disease that kills almost every pig it infects,
although it does not affect people.
In Quezon City, Mayor Joy Belmonte said the virus was
possibly transmitted from dead pigs found floating in creeks and
a nearby river.
Some hog farmers in Rizal were suspected of having dumped
the dead pigs into the river in an attempt to hide the outbreak.
The Department of Agriculture said it is vigorously
enforcing quarantine measures in areas declared as "ground
zero", where all pigs must be culled.
Mayor Belmonte, who had declared the pig deaths in Quezon
City as an African swine fever outbreak before official
confirmation from the agriculture department, said she would ban
hog-raising in backyards.
Agriculture Secretary William Dar has appealed to backyard
hog-raisers to immediately report all suspected cases of African
swine fever to prevent the disease from spreading further.
The Southeast Asian nation since last year has imposed
several measures to protect its $5 billion hog industry from the
onslaught of African swine fever, including banning the entry of
pork and pork-based products from more than a dozen nations.
As of July 1, the Philippine swine herd was estimated at
12.7 million pigs, including 8 million in backyard farms and 4.7
million in commercial operations, according to government data.