Pork supply up but demand low – farmers' group

July 8 ----- THE Philippine pork industry experienced low demand and oversupply in recent months, a leader for hog farmers said.

Speaking at a recorded video interview with The Manila Times, National Federation of Hog Farmers Inc. president Chester Warren Tan said the effects of African swine fever (ASF) for the past three years gave the pork industry a deficit. What we are doing right now since last year, we have already started to repopulate," he added. "We are experiencing low demand and oversupply, which means there is more importation and the local production is starting to increase, so we have oversupply the past months, until today."

Tan said the farmers' federation has an agreement with the Department of Agriculture (DA) for the group to provide deficit figures to the agency. "Actually, we acknowledge that when we have a deficit, we cannot produce 100 percent of our needs here in our country, we only import our deficit, but we do not want to have over-importation," he explained. Tan said a vaccine against ASF can help, but also said pigs in some farms were able to survive while unvaccinated, with some members saying they are waiting for the vaccine to arrive. "It's not mandatory or required for all of us to use the vaccine," he clarified. Tan said the pork industry has normalized in the past months, but it still needed to produce more locally to "cover up" for the deficit. "While there are still cases of ASF in some provinces like in the Visayas, we are balancing it right now with those that already started to repopulate, so this will balance the supply here in our country," Tan said.

He added that it is unlikely that the country will reach 100 percent sufficiency in the pork industry by year-end, but it is slowly repopulating and increasing production slowly. Tan said that it is safe to eat pork products, particularly locally-produced pork. Last March, the Bureau of Animal Industry warned that there would be a possible shortage of pork supply because of the effects of ASF.

Source: manilatimes.net