Pet Melliza

KAPITOLYO KANG YRONG-YRONG (Feb. 18, 2021) —Iloilo Province (pop. 1.8 million) seeks to shield itself from the African Swine Fever (ASF) by rushing an ordinance banning live hogs, frozen hog meat and pork products to include processed and canned pork from regions where the viral disease is raging — Luzon, Mindanao, Eastern Visayas and the islands of Mindoro and Masbate. Proposed Provincial Ordinance No. 2021-16, authored by SP Matt P. Palabrica, also requires swine transport vans and trucks from entering Iloilo sans certificate of disinfection from ports of origin. The measure compliments requisites already en place, that is, department administrative orders (DAO) issued bus the Department of Health (DOH), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Department of Agriculture (DA) that the Coast Guard, Marina and the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) enforce in ports in the country. Last month, provincial veterinarian Darrel Tabuada granted permits to transport 21,000 head of hogs from the...

ILOILO CITY (February 15, 2021) — TODAY, the news of police “rescuing” minors at the Lumad Bakwit School at the Talamban campus of the University of San Carlos, Cebu City, has gone viral in social media. The PNP calls that “rescue” but human rights groups and participants of the Bakwit School, denounce it an assault on their rights. It baffles sanity to see the incident as “rescue” by the police of children who were precisely at the sanctuary to seek protection from state-sponsored human rights abuses. They are refugees; they fled their mountain homes in Mindanao away from government forces, the very reason for their status as internally displaced persons. The more accurate term is arrest or assault; the video footages show it by the angry and terrified looks of the children screaming while being taken away or “rescued”, to use the term coined by their attackers. Philippine Star reports the figure of those “rescued” or arrested:  21 students of whom 15 are minors and their two teac...

ILOILO CITY— SANTA BARBARA TOWN, 15, kilometers north of this capital city, has just missed the boat. The Department of Agriculture decided instead to build its “AAA” or “triple A” abattoir elsewhere. The deal was, the DA shoulders the cost of building the facility; the town provides the site or the land to build it on. Had that plan materialized, Santa Barbara will be the only one on Panay Island to boast of having an “AAA” slaughterhouse. The DA, wanting to stay away from the bickering elders that delay the project, decided instead to pick Passi City, 56 km from here, as recipient. The town’s elders quarrelled where to build it, who the real estate agent to deal with. And that still rages to date after the town lost the opportunity to host the “AAA” abattoir.  Passi City’s existing “AA” abattoir has attracted Monterey, one of the country’s biggest, to process its hogs that the company transports in refrigerated vans to other provinces in Western Visayas and beyond the regional bo...