A key component of food security

Pork belly or liempo is the fattiest cut with alternating layers of meat and fat, making it the most flavorful of all pork cuts in the market. Usually grilled or fried, liempo is popular among Filipinos who want a flavorful and fatty pork dish. However, pork liempo remains expensive in the National Capital region, based on the February 20 data released by the Department of Agriculture (DA). The price of the favored pork cut ranged from P330 to P400 per kilogram, on par with beef brisket, which was sold from P350 to P420 per kilogram in Metro Manila.

Four years ago, pork liempo was sold for an average of P224.50 per kilogram, according to data from the DA. Prices in Metro Manila wet markets in 2018 ranged from P195 to P250 per kilogram. Dressed chicken was sold for an average of P147.96 per kilo based on the February 20, 2018 data of the DA, which was lower than the latest average price of P187.50.

The spike in the prices of meat products was largely due to the outbreak of diseases that significantly reduced the domestic population of hogs as well as poultry. Among the transboundary animal diseases that struck the country, African swine fever (ASF) proved to be the most devastating, resulting in the decline in hog population (See, “Farm growth in 2021 slowest in over 2 decades–PSA,” in the BusinessMirror, January 26, 2022). As there were fewer hogs to slaughter and pork demand remained brisk, retail prices skyrocketed.

With pork prices getting prohibitive, consumers shifted to poultry and other protein sources like eggs. Raisers, however, remain wary of the threat from avian influenza, which nearly crippled Central Luzon’s poultry industry in 2017. Fresh outbreaks of bird flu and ASF would cause surges in the prices of chicken and pork.

The DA is currently reviewing its indemnification guidelines, particularly the amount paid to raisers, in its bid to encourage them to immediately report suspicious fatalities in their farms (See, “Government reviews indemnification scheme for poultry raisers,” in the BusinessMirror, February 16, 2023). Early reporting is crucial to prevent the spread of animal diseases and protect animals in other farms. However, the DA noted that some farmers would rather sell sick birds than wait for indemnification from the government in their desire to recoup production costs.

It would do well for the government to institute mechanisms that would allow raisers to immediately receive compensation for culled animals, as delays would mean income losses or even starvation for those who depend on their backyard farms for livelihood. There’s a sense of urgency for policymakers to focus on this indemnification scheme, which is crucial to help the country fight transboundary animal diseases. This is also a good way for government to help keep food prices stable. Based on Philippine Statistics Authority data, higher food prices caused inflation to accelerate in January.

Experience has shown the need for government to step in and help prevent or fight animal diseases. And there is wisdom in incorporating measures to fight animal diseases in the government’s action plan to combat inflation, which soared to a 14-year high of 8.7 percent in January. Unfortunately, it is the Bottom 30 or the poorest of the poor who suffer the most from high food prices, which makes it more difficult for them to gain access to nutritious food.

The government’s success in addressing the challenges in the agriculture sector will help assure more than 100 million Filipinos that the Philippines can attain food security. The long-term challenge, however, is how the government can pursue food affordability, which is a key component of the country’s food security.

Congress floats ways to secure skies after Chinese balloon

By Stephen Groves | The Associated Press

WASHINGToN—As the only current US senator to have visited space, Mark kelly knows something about unexplained objects in the skies.

Back in his aviator days, Kelly saw Mylar party balloons fly by his cockpit. And once when he was piloting a NASA aircraft, he spotted an object at roughly 45,000 feet (13,700 meters)—much higher than commercial airplanes fly—that he couldn’t identify by sight.

He’s not sure he would want to see American missiles flying at those objects, either.

“I don’t think we want to get into the business of launching AIM-9Xs—at $400,000 a pop—at weather balloons,” Kelly told The Associated Press, referring to the heatseeking, air-to-air missiles used in recent weeks to shoot down a series of aerial objects, including a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon.

The Biden administration’s unprecedented peacetime downing of the Chinese balloon and three other objects has raised new and troubling questions about the security of American airspace, alarming lawmakers who fear the episode has exposed a vulnerability that could be exploited by other foreign adversaries.

While the House and the Senate both voted unanimously to condemn China’s ruling political party for the incursion and largely supported the Biden administration’s decision to shoot down the balloon, they have questions about what’s next.

Sen. Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat who has been tasked with heading up an investigation into how the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon was allowed to pass over crucial US missile sites, said that he would ensure the Defense Department has funds for a protocol to assess the threat of unidentified flying objects.

“We’re going to get to the bottom of what happened and make sure we have a plan going forward to detect and then find out what potential problems this balloon may cause and then a way to bring it down that doesn’t cost us a $400,000 missile,” Tester, who chairs the Defense subcommittee on appropriations, told Fox News Channel.

Concerns over China, which has criticized the US for “an obvious overreaction,” and worries about interference with civilian aircraft are shared

By Michelle Fay Cortez | Bloomberg Opinion

For much of the past century, a strategy known as elimination was the gold standard for dealing with deadly new viruses. But China’s abrupt reversal of its Covid Zero policy, which took it to an extreme, has cast doubts over the approach and left a gaping hole in the world’s game plan for the next pandemic.

Even outside China, elimination measures like stay-at-home orders proved politically unpopular and difficult to carry out. With some medical experts doubting whether airborne respiratory pathogens can be suppressed, global public health officials are now without a consensus on how best to contain new infectious diseases.

Early in the pandemic, proponents argued elimination was morally, scientifically and economically superior to so-called mitigation approaches, such as slowing the spread of disease through physical distancing and limiting social gatherings, or letting the virus loose among the young while protecting more vulnerable members of the population.

As cases spread throughout the world, the full weight of the policy emerged, demanding strict border controls, lockdowns and extensive testing and contact-tracing. But it also required fast action and global coordination, which was difficult by members of both political parties, creating the potential in Congress to mount a robust bipartisan response. But lawmakers are also mindful of adding yet more military costs—the US already spends more than $800 billion yearly on defense programs— and are wary of expensive shooting sprees for every random object that appears in America’s skies.

Kelly, an Arizona Democrat, is working on legislation that would require weather balloons to carry transponders that could communicate with air traffic control systems to separate research balloons from mysterious objects where “we don’t know what that is. We don’t know where it came from.”

“It would really help the Defense Department to be able to sort out what is civilian science payload, what’s a weather balloon, what’s a NASA balloon, what’s a private company in the United States doing, what might be even a US military,” said Kelly, who logged 54 days in space as an astronaut before jumping into politics.

Other lawmakers have launched a flurry of proposals aimed at the skies including a comprehensive examination of encounters with unidentified aerial objects as well as an investigation into how the military is tracking objects floating over the country.

President Joe Biden has said the military is developing “sharper rules” to track, monitor and potentially shoot down unknown aerial objects. He has justified the downings by saying the objects presented a remote risk to civilian planes. But the four missile attacks were the first known peacetime shootdowns of unauthorized objects in US airspace. Officials now say the three later objects shot down likely had a “benign purpose” and were detected after the US military set its radar systems to detect slow-moving balloons. China’s alleged practice of using balloons for surveillance exploits a potential oversight in air traffic control systems, Kelly said. The systems aren’t designed to track the thousands of objects that move in on high-altitude winds.

The National Weather Service alone launches roughly 60,000 balloons every year to monitor for extreme weather. Universities, government organizations and even ham radio hobbyists send up thousands of others.

“This is about whether an adversary has developed a capability that they know we’re not looking for because our systems are set up to see missiles and airplanes. They’re not set up to see smaller objects at lower altitudes,” said Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, the top Republican on to achieve.

“In hindsight, people could have said let’s throw everything we can at this pandemic and try to stamp it out,” said epidemiologist Michael Baker, who was the architect of New Zealand’s early elimination Covid response. “I think we had a reasonable chance of doing it. But the opportunity is very early on in a pandemic. Once there’s global distribution, you’ve got a huge challenge.”

China’s experience, marked by months-long lockdowns, isolation and family separations, showed simultaneously that elimination was possible and that it came at a cost too high for most countries, especially democratic ones, to bear.

The first example was in Wuhan, where Covid pervaded the city in late 2019 and was wiped out less than five months later.

Proof of concept

“IT was quite a revelation that China was able to stop transmission in 2020 in Wuhan,” said Baker, who recently became the director of the Public Health Communication Centre in New Zealand, a non-profit group designed to improve the way medical information and research is conveyed.

Early in the pandemic, proponents argued elimination was morally, scientifically and economically superior to so-called mitigation approaches, such as slowing the spread of disease through physical distancing and limiting social gatherings, or letting the virus loose among the young while protecting more vulnerable members of the population.

“That was the proof of concept.”

New Zealand, which had a little more of a heads up, followed China’s example. It halted the march of Covid with an intense, two-month stayat-home order, plus other measures like contact tracing and quarantines.

A handful of other governments in Asia also pursued the policy, including in Hong Kong, Australia, Taiwan, and Singapore, with varying degrees of success. Vietnam, Laos and Mongolia, with long borders and limited resources, also used it.

The initial benefits were clear.

All were able to curb infections until pharmaceutical interventions like vaccines and antivirals were developed. During that time, health care providers learned how to best treat patients, such as giving them steroids and positioning them on their stomachs, which boosted survival rates.

Per-capita death rates in Covid Zero countries came in far below those that opted for mitigation, also known as flattening the curve. Japan and South Korea, which didn’t pursue elimination but where social distancing and masking were followed closely, also fared well in suppressing deaths.

While President Xi Jinping touted China’s success at saving lives, the unrelenting restrictions long after vaccines became widely available triggered protests and dragged on the economy. Experts said the severity of China’s approach may have tainted the world’s perceptions of elimination measures which, when applied less harshly, have helped to contain deadly diseases like polio, measles and SARS.

“It created a false alternative in which a draconian, individual rightsdestroying lockdown was seen as one option, and the other was to do nothing,” said Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for See “World’s,” A13