MANILA, Philippines — The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will approve within two weeks the country’s first vaccine against African swine fever (ASF) for commercial use, according to Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr.
“The approval of the ASF vaccine will be out soon,” Tiu Laurel told journalists on the sidelines of the Presidential Assistance for Farmers, Fisherfolk and Families event in Calbayog, Samar yesterday.
“The FDA and the DA (Department of Agriculture) are working very closely on this. We have a good teamwork on this,” Tiu Laurel said.
He said the commercial approval by the FDA would be followed by the distribution of the ASF vaccine.
The commercial availability of the vaccine is expected to curb the spread of the disease, the DA said.
Government officials and swine industry stakeholders have been waiting for the commercial availability of an effective vaccine against ASF.
The disease, which is not harmful to humans, has decimated over three million hogs since the country recorded its first confirmed outbreak in 2019.
In March, Tiu Laurel said the Philippines would obtain its first ASF vaccine by the end of this year.
President Marcos earlier announced that the country would have a commercially available ASF vaccine by the middle of 2024.
In 2023, the FDA created a task force dedicated to evaluate the ASF vaccine.
Local hog production has sustained its recovery rate recorded in 2023.
But the rate is still lower than what producers and government officials had hoped for as ASF threats hampered swine repopulation efforts.
Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority showed hog output growing by 3.3 percent, or to 1.79 million tons in 2023, from 1.74 in 2022, which was the highest in three years.
The growth rate increased for two consecutive years since production plunged to 1.69 million tons in 2021, after the disease decimated the country’s hog population.
Despite the improvement, hog production last year was nowhere near the 2.25-million-ton average output recorded from 2016 to 2019, before ASF devastated the industry.
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.