ASF vaccine available by yearend

MANILA, Philippines — The wait for the vaccine for African swine fever (ASF), which has decimated over three million pigs in the country, would be over within the year, according to Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr.

“The good news is there are already vaccines that are on the way that may be accredited within the year by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) with assistance from the Department of Agriculture,” Laurel said.

He disclosed that two companies – a Vietnamese and an American – are now seeking regulatory approval from the FDA for their vaccines, while two other firms from Vietnam and Thailand are planning to apply.

“Hopefully, we can eradicate ASF by next year,” he said. Laurel’s statement came about two weeks after the FDA revealed it has yet to receive any applications for domestic use of ASF vaccine.

The FDA created a task force in 2023 dedicated to the evaluation of ASF vaccines in the country.

The country has been grappling with ASF since confirming in 2019 the first outbreak of the trans-boundary animal disease.

The reduction in domestic hog population has caused pork retail prices to soar to unprecedented levels, forcing the government to reduce tariffs to augment local supply with foreign stocks and arrest price spikes.

Local hog production has sustained its 2023 recovery, but is still at a rate lower than what producers and government officials had hoped, as threats of ASF have deterred repopulation efforts.

Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) also showed hog output growing by 3.3 percent to 1.79 million metric tons in 2023, the highest in three years, from 1.74 million MT in 2022.

The volume rose for the second consecutive year since production plunged to 1.69 million MT in 2021 after ASF decimated the country’s pig population.

Despite the increase, hog production last year was nowhere near the 2.25 million MT average output from 2016 to 2019, before the onslaught of ASF.

Experts said the absence of an authorized, commercially available ASF vaccine is one of the reasons behind the slow repopulation of hogs in the country.