Pork prices soar in Metro

The price of pork in Metro Manila has increased over the past few weeks partly due to a shortage of hogs in Bulacan, which supplies 60 percent of at least 6,000 hogs that the metropolis requires every day.

Dr. Felipe Bartolome, head of the Bulacan provincial veterinary office, said Metro Manila experiences a daily shortfall of at least 3,500 hogs.

He said Bulacan’s capability to supply Metro Manila’s needs was reduced by at least 2,000 hogs, while other provinces have failed to supply the remaining 1,500 hogs.

Bartolome said that the current situation partly explains the increasing price of pork, which has reached P180 per kilo in some areas.

He said the shortage in pork supply was an aftereffect of the swine flu and hog cholera that ravaged Bulacan hog farms last year.

“It may take until July before the supply normalizes, because our backyard raisers lost their hogs (to disease),” Bartolome said.

Alvin Estrella, a backyard hog raiser in Barangay Balite, Malolos City, confirmed Bartolome’s statement.

“We are practically the only ones still raising hogs because the others lost their hogs last year,” he said.

Estrella also expressed fears that a heat wave may cause a high mortality rate among his piglets.

As this developed, the Bulacan provincial government launched the “Payong Bio-security para sa Bagong Bulakenyo (PBBB)”, an information campaign to educate commercial and backyard hog raisers in the province how to avoid and deal with porcine reproductive respiratory syndrome (PRRS) that also ravaged hog farms last year.

Bartolome said that the campaign was designed to increase hog raisers’ awareness of bio-security measures they could adopt to protect their farms.