The Department of Agriculture (DA) on Tuesday allayed fears following a media report on the alleged avian influenza (AI) or bird flu outbreak in Tarlac province.
In an ambush interview, DA Secretary Francisco Tiu-Laurel Jr. said the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) has not received any official report from the local government of Tarlac.
“There’s no confirmatory at puro technically ‘marites’ lang ang nangyayari (and mostly it’s just technically gossip that’s happening). So, BAI has not received any official report of such outbreak,” he said.
In a separate interview, Agriculture Assistant Secretary Constante Palabrica reported that BAI has already received blood samples from three farms in Tarlac.
He, however, did not specify the sources of the blood samples.
“As I said, we have a modern AI laboratory in BAI… Once they come out with the sasabihin nila (they will say) AI negative, don’t doubt it. When they say AI positive, don’t doubt,” he said citing a “reliable” facility for AI confirmatory assessment.
Palabrica said the result is expected to come out within the week.
“Kapag nakita naming (If we see it) positive, we’ll announce it’s positive. Pero iyong mga statement na may bird flu [outbreak], hindi pa namin pwedeng i-validate (but the statement that there’s an outbreak, we cannot validate that yet),” he added.
Should the samples test positive, Palabrica assured control measures would be easily activated against the possible spread of AI.
“Ang AI madaling sugpuin kumpara sa ASF (African swine fever), dahil ang AI kailangan mo lamang i-cull lahat ng mga manok. Papahingahin mo ang mga farm, then after six months pwede ka na uling maglagay ng manok. Ang ASF taon, dekada bago mamatay ang virus (The AI can be easily contained compared to ASF, because you just need to cull all the chickens. Rest the farm, and then after six months you can put layers again. The ASF takes years, decades before the virus dies),” Palabrica said.
Laurel, meanwhile, assured that a positive result would not have a significant effect on the stability of egg supply in the country.
“Ang eggs naman natin ngayon, medyo overproduction tayo ng (For our eggs right now, we have an overproduction of) eggs. I think there’s ample supply and Batangas is a very good source for the supply. So, I don’t think there’s an issue,” he said. (PNA)
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