Negros Occidental Provincial Veterinarian Dr. Renante Decena will be part of the group that will create the Philippine government protocol on foot-and-mouth disease to emergency preparedness capacity.

Decena said yesterday, that he will attend the workshop on pre-testing of the training module for recognized FMD zones and countries in South East Asia on Sept. 3 and 4 at the Manila Hotel, in Manila.

He said the workshop will help them formulate trade rules and restrictions on exported meat and meat products and animals.

It will also discuss and analyze the present situation of the FMD diseases that may occur even in FMD-free areas, Decena added.

“Since 2005, the Philippines has been free of FMD without vaccination but we have to be careful and maintain this status so that we can keep up with the foreign standards in terms of exporting our animals and other food and livestock products,” Decena said.

The risk analysis will take up the production, breeding and meat processing of the country and will also identify restrictions for other countries, he also said.

Decena also recalled that in 1996, the Department of Agriculture has created the National FMD Task Force due to the disease occurrence in 1995 affecting 27 provinces with 1,553 FMD outbreaks and the last was in December 2005 in Quezon province.*LTG

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