Piñol says bird flu in Nueva Ecija farm contained

The recently reported case of avian influenza in a poultry farm in Cabiao, Nueva Ecija has been "successfully contained" by the local officials of the province and workers of the Department of Agriculture (DA), Secretary Emmanuel Piñol said on Saturday.

"In an inspiring story of the beauty of the Filipino Bayanihan Spirit, local officials of the Province of Nueva Ecija and workers of the Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) successfully contained an avian influenza case which was reported in an egg layer farm in Cabiao town two weeks ago," Piñol said in a post on his Facebook page.

The Agriculture chief said the new avian influenza case reported on November 12 was immediately acted upon by officials of Cabiao led by Mayor Ramil Rivera, who directed veterinary officials to submit specimens to the Regional Animal Disease Detection Laboratory.

"When the tests turned out positive, he ordered the immediate culling of 42,000 heads of egg layers completing the task on November 22," Piñol said.

The Agriculture chief earlier said that the case was not immediately made public to avoid raising an alarm similar to what happened when a bird flu outbreak was declared last August in one of Cabiao's neighboring towns, San Isidro, where some 300,000 birds were culled then and the area was placed under quarantine.

"Following the recently approved modified protocol in handling bird flu cases, there will be no more one kilometer radius as containment zone where all fowls will be culled and no 7-km. radius as controlled zone where movement of fowls will not be allowed," Piñol said.

"Under the new internationally set protocols, only fowls in the affected farm will be culled while those in the surrounding areas will be monitored and subjected to random tests," he said.

The Agriculture chief assured affected farm owners, whose fowls were culled, that they will be compensated.

Displaced farm workers will also be assisted, Piñol said.

The new protocols were approved during a stakeholders' consultative forum called by the Philippine Council for Agriculture and Fisheries (PCAF).

To prevent confusion and panic which could adversely affect the industry, only the Agriculture Secretary is the authorized official to issue statements on the bird flu under the guidelines approved during the PCAF forum.

"There is no 100 percent that there will be no more bird flu cases in the future but unlike before, the DA and the sector are more prepared to handle the crisis," Piñol said. —ALG, GMA News