Jun Romo, president of the Philippine College of Poultry Practitioners, said the approval of the guidelines on targeted use of vaccination against avian influenza is two-fold.
The PCCP is the partner private organization of the Department of Agriculture in crafting and drafting the guidelines on bird flu vaccination use. “We want to protect the areas critical to our food security, especially those near to the marshlands where wild birds go. And we know that those are the same areas where the bulk of our layer population can be found,” Romo said.
Industry players have sounded the alarm that various vaccines, claiming to be against bird flu, are readily available and accessible in e-commerce platforms like Shopee. “If you get hit by bird flu, it can wipe out all your birds and that is a huge devastation. So, poultry raisers are risking using illegal vaccines just to have a sense of protection compared to having none,” San Diego told reporters in an interview on Wednesday.
He emphasized that the vaccines underwent rigorous local trials and have been used by other countries as well in their fight against bird flu.