Handling of bird...

fowls have died due to the virus.

The Department of Agriculture (DA) is now targeting to cull as many as 600,000 birds until Saturday to prevent the outbreak from reaching other areas.

SINAG is still skeptical. According to the group, "it is not an outbreak in magnitude, value, and volume as only two farms in one municipality is suspected to have been infected (by the virus)."

"The DA could have properly defined it, without noise and fanfare, as an isolated case. All over the world, countries with worse, recurring, and longer cases of avian influenza have handled it with care and deliberate procedures without compromising food safety, farm bio-security and more importantly, public health," SINAG said.

"If the intention is to wantonly import as there is the common chorus of impending shortage from the DA, may we remind the DA that all our major source of chicken imports have worse and longer cases of avian flu that is transmittable to humans," it added.

The group then reiterated its call to the DA to ban the import of poultry products from these countries, instead of banning the movement of poultry products from Luzon to Visayas and Mindanao.

"It is always the local agriculture industry that has to bear the brunt and suffer while there is leniency to agriculture imports from countries with recurring health pandemics," it further said.

As of now, samples of infected birds have been sent by Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) to the Australian Animal Health Laboratory, which is a reference laboratory certified by the World Organization for Animal Health, an intergovernmental organization responsible for improving animal health worldwide.

In 2004, a potential outbreak was also reported in the Philippines but confirmatory tests from Australia eventually revealed it negative.

Elias Jose Inciong, president of the United Broiler Raisers Association (UBRA), said in an earlier text exchange that we should wait for the results of these tests.

"We need to wait for the confirmatory tests from the Regional Testing Center in Australia. As for the impact, we don't know yet. It depends on how matters will be explained to consumers. We can only advise the public to cook chicken very well. For farms, to enhance biosecurity measures," he further said.

On Thursday, the DA had sought the help of Armed Forces of the Philippines in the depopulation of farms in Pampanga.

Piñol also asked the assistance of the Philippine National Police in securing and strengthening quarantine stations.