November 2017

SOURCE: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/948010/chickens-culled-nueva-ecija-quarantine-bird-flu-poultry#ixzz4zrrhXHEI

CABIAO, Nueva Ecija — Workers culled 42,000 chickens in a village here on Nov. 21, provincial administrator, Alejandro Abesamis, said on Monday, but neither he nor local officials had explained why.

Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol on Tuesday also neither confirmed nor denied that a new outbreak of avian influenza had struck this town, only saying the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) was still waiting for confirmatory tests.

Piñol said: “We commend the farm owner and the local veterinary officials for their vigilance. While waiting for confirmatory tests, they took it upon themselves to act … There is therefore no reason to be alarmed.”

“The DA (Department of Agriculture) is in full and complete control and necessary safeguards are in place,” he said in a text message.

Cabiao is near San Isidro, one of two towns quarantined in August by the DA due to bird flu infestations that forced veterinarians and poultry owners to kill about 300,000 birds there.

Sources said the chickens were raised by a poultry farm in Barangay Concepcion here. Local government records show that 15 poultry farms operate in Cabiao, five of  which have been inactive since September.

Soledad Garcia, municipal veterinary officer, would not comment on the birds’ destruction, saying she was prohibited from discussing issues by the protocol established after the bird flu outbreak in August.

Possible resurgence

A bird flu outbreak was first announced on Aug. 11 in  San Luis town in Pampanga province. A month later, President Rodrigo Duterte declared the outbreak over.

Given the possible resurgence of bird flu in Nueva Ecija, the DA will implement for the first time its new set of protocols created with the Philippine Council for Agriculture and Fisheries (PCAF).

According to Piñol, culling operations will now only be done in the affected farms. Other farms surrounding the area will only be subjected to random tests.

Quarantine zones and control areas surrounding the bird flu infestation site will also be removed, unlike the protocols used during the first outbreak.

This time, Piñol said, the new guidelines will not stop the movement of poultry stocks during an outbreak. In August, BAI released a memorandum banning the shipment of chickens and poultry products from Luzon to the Visayas and Mindanao.

New protocols

“These new protocols are in line with international standards and approved by the industry stakeholders during the last PCAF meeting,” Piñol said.

The DA is also planning to enforce a clustering system, by dividing the country into zones to contain any future outbreaks. Luzon will be Cluster A, Visayas, Cluster B, and Mindanao, Cluster C.

“If there will be an outbreak in the Visayas, or Cluster B, we can tell other countries [which] import meat from us that Cluster A and Cluster C are safe,” Piñol said.

“That’s what they also do in other countries like Brazil and India. When we buy buffalo in India, we source it from areas with no reported cases

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PHILIPPINES – As the Philippine poultry sector recovers from the bird flu outbreak, Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol sees no urgent need to import chicken for the Christmas season.

“No. We have enough chicken supply,” Mr Piñol said in an interview in San Juan City on Thursday.

Mr Piñol said that he is in fact, discouraging imports because the country’s farmers are just now recovering.

GMA News Online reports the farm gate price of chicken in bird flu-hit Pampanga and Nueva Ecija has returned to P95 per kilo compared with P10 to P15 during the avian flu outbreak in August, the Cabinet official noted.

“They’re recovering now. In fact, the price of chicken is high again,” he said.

“Cobb has been growing market share in Asia Pacific substantially over the last three to four years, and we are on target in 2017 to become the breed of choice in the region,” he said.

“On top of the new facilities we’ve built in China and our plan to produce grandparents in New Zealand, we are also growing our sales and technical team. Our goal is to have a strong, highly skilled team of professionals who are an integral part of the Cobb family supporting our customers. We’re also launching an advertising campaign that highlights the expansion of our team in Asia.

“On the product side, we are introducing the CobbMV male which is expected to gain at least two points of feed conversion improvement,” he added. “The CobbMV male has previously demonstrated great performance in all climates with outstanding fertility and has also improved broiler livability. We are going to do a full launch at VIV Asia 2017 and we’re really excited”.

During the week, Roy Mutimer, regional vice president EMEA and Asia-Pacific,spoke about global developments for Cobb while technical experts Winfridus Bakker and Cody Polley shared their knowledge around breeder management with the team.

Cobb Asia is also introducing a Chick Improvement Plan to help key customers improve their breeder performance, taking advantage of the company’s worldwide expertise in breeder management.

Cobb-Vantress, Inc. is a poultry research and development company engaged in the production improvement and sale of broiler breeding stock. Cobb is the world’s oldest pedigree broiler breeding company. Founded in 1916, Cobb has grown into one of the world’s leading suppliers of broiler breeding stock with distribution into over 120 countries. Cobb has contributed to the dynamic efficiency and growth of an industry that has transformed chicken into an economically affordable healthy protein source for many of the over seven billion people in the world.

Source : http://www.thepoultrysite.com/poultrynews/38115/cobb-looking-ahead-to-accelerating-growth-in-asia/