Ang bakuna dili pako. Ang biosecurity mao gihapon ang tiil nga naglakaw.
Yes, for fatteners. On 2 September 2026 the DA announced that BAI had approved AVAC ASF LIVE for commercial sale, the first ASF vaccine for fatteners cleared for public sale. You buy it from a BAI-accredited veterinary outlet once stock arrives, not online. Sows and boars are still excluded, and no per-dose price has been published.
Where the vaccine actually stands, October 2026
Three things happened in the run-up to the 2 September announcement and they pull in different directions.
First, the numbers got better, then much worse. BAI's active-barangay count fell from 98 at the end of December 2025 to a low of 6 barangays in 4 provinces on 22 May 2026, then rose with every bulletin to a peak of 293 barangays in 31 provinces on 24 September. BAI's latest national bulletin, dated 9 October 2026, counts 226 active barangays across 24 provinces; the fall from 293 is almost all Mindanao and the Visayas clearing, as the October 2026 ASF cases post shows province by province. FAO's 16 July 2026 situation update put 21 barangays in 17 cities and municipalities across 11 provinces back on the active list as of 10 July, and July kept adding: Lamitan City in Basilan confirmed cases affecting 113 pig raisers with at least 284 pigs dead, Zamboanga City was monitoring seven barangays with more than 200 pigs dead or destroyed, and Bacolod added two more barangays on 27 July. Cebu was still reported ASF-free on 16 July; by September it was not, with three barangays declared hotspots (Ginatilan, and Pamutan, Toong and Buhisan in Cebu City).
BAI's national count is kept as its own series, one row per bulletin. The herd behind it is published too, and it reads better as two populations than one: PSA's smallhold inventory and its commercial inventory came back from ASF at visibly different speeds, and the smallhold count is the one that holds most of the country's pigs. Worth knowing before you read the next headline about the industry recovering.
Second, the legal ground moved. Republic Act 12308, the Animal Industry Development and Competitiveness Act, took veterinary drugs, biologics and devices out of FDA hands and gave them to BAI. AVAC's monitored-release certificate expired on 11 July 2026, right in the middle of that handover. So the vaccine landed with a new regulator, under a new law, and the commercial clearance DA Assistant Secretary Arnel De Mesa promised in June for Q3 was announced by the DA on 2 September. The same release said a second vaccine, PROVAC from South Korea, is undergoing BAI testing and could give raisers another option next year. Supply is the practical catch. AVAC shipped 100,000 doses to the Philippines on 10 October, completing a 300,000-dose order, according to VietNamNet. Against the 8.93 million head PSA counted on 1 July 2026, that is not a lot of vials, and I would expect early stock to go where cases are.
Third, the trial data raised questions that were not in the 2024 press releases. DA Region 7's livestock and ASF focal person Voltaire Amper told BusinessMirror on 15 July 2026 that antibodies in vaccinated pigs decline after roughly five months, and that virus fragments were detected in vaccinated animals' urine and intestinal tracts. Neither finding kills the vaccine. Both explain why approval slipped from Q1 to Q3, why the clearance is for fatteners only, and why BAI put draft post-vaccination monitoring rules out for public comment on 25 September, three weeks after the clearance.
Check local availability yourself rather than trusting this paragraph. Ask your municipal or provincial veterinarian one question: "Asa ang accredited nga outlet nga nagbaligya og AVAC diri?" Per Secretary Tiu Laurel, the cleared product is sold through BAI-accredited veterinary shops and outlets, not by hardware stores or online sellers.
The new paperwork: BAI's draft rules for commercial sale
The controlled program's rules (further down) were written for government-run vaccination. Commercial sale needs different ones, and BAI published a draft memorandum circular on post-vaccination monitoring for comment on 25 September 2026, with comments closing 2 October. It is not final. But it shows where the rules are heading, and for a backyard raiser five parts of it matter.
- Prescription before purchase. A Veterinary Prescription/Order Form signed by a licensed vet is required before an outlet can sell or release the vaccine to a farm. It names your farm, the number and production stage of the pigs and the doses. Government-run campaigns are exempt.
- Licensed sellers only. The registration holder may only use BAI-licensed establishments as distributors, and must give BAI the list. A seller who cannot show a BAI License to Operate is not one of them.
- A vaccination card within 30 days. For a farm-initiated shot, the owner files an ASF Vaccination Card (farm, date, number and age of pigs, batch number, doses) within 30 days. The LGU or DA regional office can help if you cannot use the online form.
- Label use only. Using the vaccine outside its approved age group, production stage or dose is prohibited. That is the rule that keeps your sows out.
- A vaccine-virus detection is not an outbreak. Finding vaccine virus in a healthy vaccinated pig does not by itself turn your municipality Red. But any positive or inconclusive test puts the pig under movement and slaughter restriction until it is resolved, and a pig found carrying vaccine virus cannot go to slaughter while it is still viremic.
That last point is the one to plan a sale around. Vaccinate a batch too close to market day and a routine test can hold it on your farm while feed keeps going in.
What the vaccine is, and what it is not
AVAC ASF Live is a freeze-dried live attenuated vaccine built on ASFV-G-ΔMGF, a genotype II strain with six genes deleted and then adapted through 30 passages in a pig macrophage cell line. Single intramuscular shot. It was licensed for commercial sale in Vietnam in 2023 and imported here for controlled use from 2024.
The published safety and efficacy work (Diep et al., Transboundary and Emerging Diseases, 2025) is genuinely decent for a first-generation ASF vaccine, which is a low bar historically. But read the shape of it, not the headline.
| What you'll hear | What the data actually says |
|---|---|
| "One shot protects the pig" | 100% survival on challenge at 28, 90, 120 and 150 days post-vaccination. Only 60% at 14 days, and 40% at 180 days. Immunity has a front end and a back end. |
| "Safe" | A 100-fold overdose produced no abnormal signs over 45 days, and no vaccine virus was shed in secretions in that study. Field monitoring in PH has still flagged virus fragments in urine and gut. |
| "It covers ASF" | It covers highly virulent genotype II. A recombinant genotype I/II strain that has emerged elsewhere in Asia is not neutralised by it. |
| "Give it to the whole herd" | Weanlings and growers 4 weeks and up only. Excluded: gilts, sows, boars. No breeding-animal safety data exists. |
That last row is the one that matters most to anyone running a farrow-to-finish backyard setup. Your sow is the expensive animal. Your sow is also the animal the vaccine will not touch. A vaccine that protects fatteners for roughly the length of one grow-out cycle is a useful tool for a fattening operation and close to irrelevant for a two-sow breeder, at least in its current form. Vietnam's own industry press has been publicly asking for a sow-and-boar vaccine since 2025. Nobody has one yet.
The controlled-program rules, and why they still matter
These were the rules for government-run vaccination from 2024 until the commercial clearance. BAI's draft rules above do not repeat the zone gate for a private purchase, but a government campaign in your area may still run on this circular, so it is worth knowing. The rule that caught most people out was this one. Under DA Administrative Circular No. 13, Series of 2024, vaccination was permitted only in barangays with no active ASF case for at least 40 days, and only inside Red (Infected) or Pink (Buffer) zones, or where there is evidence of ASF-negative surveillance.
Read that twice. Under the controlled program, a clean barangay in a Green zone did not qualify. The program was designed to ring-fence outbreaks and to gather safety data, not to protect every pig in the country. Sus, most raisers who called their municipal agriculture office asking for the shot were turned away for exactly this reason, and nobody explained why.
What the circular does get right for smallholders: there is no minimum number of pigs required, and the pigs do not have to be the same age group. A five-head backyard raiser in a qualifying barangay is eligible on paper, same as a 500-head commercial farm. That was an amendment in AC 13, which replaced the tighter rules in AC 05 and AC 08 of the same year after DA admitted low participation.
| Requirement (AC 13 s.2024) | What it means at backyard scale |
|---|---|
| Barangay with no active case ≥ 40 days, in Red or Pink zone | The gate most raisers fail. Verify your current zone with the municipal vet on the day you ask, not from a map you saw last month. |
| Accomplished letter of intent (Form 1) | One page. The office has the form. |
| Signed Veterinarian-Client Patient Relationship, VCPR (Form 2) | You need a licensed vet attached to your farm. For most backyard raisers this is the municipal vet. |
| DA or BAI registration, or RSBSA listing | If you are not RSBSA-listed, do that first. It is free and it also makes your PCIC premium free. |
| Farm Biosecurity Classification Level 1 for smallhold farms | Level 2 applies to commercial and semi-commercial. Level 1 is the achievable tier: perimeter, single entry, footbath, dedicated boots. |
| Farm vaccination program, if any | Optional. Your existing classical swine fever (CSF) and FMD schedule is fine to submit. |
| Pigs must be apparently healthy or test ASF-negative | Sick pig, no vaccine. Obviously. |
How to get a dose without wasting a trip
Go in person. Phone calls get "wala pa" and nothing else. Ask for the livestock technician or the municipal veterinarian, not the front desk.
- Ask where the nearest BAI-accredited outlet is, and whether it has stock. "Asa ang pinakaduol nga accredited nga outlet, ug naa na bay stock?" With only a 300,000-dose order landed by mid-October, plenty of provinces will hear "wala pa".
- Ask who writes the prescription. Under BAI's draft rules the outlet needs a licensed vet's prescription before it can release a vial. For most backyard raisers that vet is the municipal vet; ask whether the office will issue one, and what it needs from you to do it. The draft also says the shot is given by trained personnel under a vet's supervision, so this is not a do-it-yourself job even if you already inject your own pigs for CSF.
- Count your pigs by stage before you go. The prescription lists the number and production stage of the pigs and the doses. Know how many fatteners you have and their ages. Sows, gilts and boars do not go on it. If you are still buying in, the weaner age you buy at decides how much of the five-month protection window your batch actually uses.
- Bring your RSBSA number, or get listed that day. It is free, the controlled program required it, and it is the gate for every DA subsidy, which is where a backyard vaccine subsidy would come from if the ₱1 billion request is funded. The same visit is where you ask about PCIC livestock insurance, which DA and PCIC made premium-free for RSBSA-listed backyard raisers under the 2021 ASF program; confirm it still applies.
- Ask what testing your municipality expects after the shot. See the monitoring section below. Get the answer before you buy, not after.
- Get a name and a callback date. Not a promise. A name.
If no outlet near you has stock, the useful ask is different: ask the municipal vet to put your farm on the list for when the province gets doses, or for any government-run campaign. Government-run campaigns do not need a private prescription under the draft rules.
Registration itself is worth doing regardless of the vaccine, and it interacts with your permits, so read the LGU permits and registration guide before you go.
The monitoring obligation is the real price
Nobody advertises this part. Under AC 13, the controlled-program circular, a vaccinated farm is monitored from the day of vaccination to the day the pigs are slaughtered. Not for 30 days. To slaughter.
- Whole blood, serum and nasal swab samples collected at 30 days post-vaccination, and again within 7 days before slaughter if the pig is still on farm.
- Sample size calculated from the Cannon and Roe table at 2% prevalence and 95% confidence. For a 1,000-head population that is 138 pigs. For a five-head backyard pen it means all of them.
- All monitoring documented and submitted to the LGU, the DA Regional Field Office and BAI.
- Movement to slaughter requires a negative RT-PCR result plus a Certificate of Free Status on ASF (CFS-ASF).
- A pig that tests RT-PCR positive with clinical signs is depopulated. A pig that tests positive without clinical signs gets a 7-day movement suspension and a retest, and if it stays positive and DIVA-positive for wild virus, it is depopulated too.
BAI's draft commercial rules are lighter on the farmer (a vaccination card within 30 days, then BAI-designed surveillance on selected farms) but keep the same principle: a positive test stops movement until it is resolved. My honest position: for a fattening-only raiser inside a hot zone, this is a trade worth making. Paperwork against a total wipeout is not a close call. For a two-sow breeder in a quiet barangay, the vaccine covers the wrong animals and the compliance load is heavier than the benefit. Spend the same effort on your perimeter and your sourcing rules instead.
Do not buy ASF vaccine online. Ever.
Vials show up on Facebook Marketplace and in messenger groups every few months, usually described as "imported" or "direct from Vietnam." Smuggled ASF and bird flu vaccines have been intercepted in travel luggage, hidden in tumblers and plastic glasses, and CIDG has arrested sellers with DA present.
Buying one is illegal, and the practical risk is worse than the legal one. A live attenuated vaccine that has been through an unrefrigerated luggage compartment is a live virus of unknown potency going into your pen. DA Undersecretary Deogracias Victor Savellano put the policy plainly in 2024: no compromises on illegal sale and use. Veterinary experts have also warned that unauthorised use pushes the virus toward strains that the approved vaccine will not cover.
If someone offers you ASF vaccine for cash outside an accredited veterinary outlet, they are selling you a felony and a biosecurity breach in the same bottle.
What actually protects your pigs this month
The unglamorous stuff, which has not changed since 2019 and will not change on the day the vaccine is licensed.
- Sourcing. One discounted weaner from an unknown seller is the single most common way ASF enters a backyard pen. Verify the veterinary health certificate with your municipal vet, and refuse animals from any barangay you cannot place on a zone map. The full sourcing and perimeter build is in the ASF-era biosecurity guide.
- Quarantine. 30 days minimum for new arrivals, separate pen, separate scoop, separate boots. If you have nowhere to put a quarantine pen, your pen layout needs fixing before your vaccination status does.
- Footbath discipline. Daily solution change. A week-old footbath is worse than none because it makes people careless.
- Know the picture. Sudden death in more than one pig, high fever, skin reddening, blue ears, bloody scour. Compare against the ASF symptom picture and the general sick-pig signs, then call the municipal vet within 24 hours. Reporting is mandatory.
- Have the outbreak plan written down. The first 48 hours decide how much you lose. Walk through the step-by-step outbreak response before you need it.
- Keep the shots you can actually give. CSF, FMD where required, mycoplasma, plus deworming. The vaccination schedule guide covers what is available to you today, all of which is more relevant to your herd right now than ASF vaccine is.
An ASF vaccine does not make a pig safe to move. Movement of vaccinated pigs still requires a negative RT-PCR and a CFS-ASF certificate under AC 13. Raisers who assume "vaccinated" means "clearable" get stopped at checkpoints and lose the sale.
What commercial approval changes, and what it does not
The DA announced the commercial clearance on 2 September 2026. Here is the realistic first-year picture.
| Your situation | What commercial approval changes |
|---|---|
| Fattening 10 to 30 head, buying weaners in | Real benefit. Vaccinate at 8 to 10 weeks and the protection window roughly matches your grow-out. Budget for the dose, the vet's prescription and the fee to administer it. |
| Two to five sows, farrow to finish | Partial. You can cover the offspring, not the sows or the boar. The breeding herd stays on biosecurity alone. |
| Native pigs, extensive or semi-scavenging | Low priority. No native-breed-specific data, and the animals hardest to handle are the ones hardest to sample for compliance. |
| Green zone, no ASF nearby for years | Little urgency. Availability will lag approval, and early stock goes where cases are. |
| Currently inside a Red zone | Highest value. Ask your municipal vet this week about stock, the prescription and movement rules for vaccinated pigs. |
What does not change: the price of pork. PSA's last official quarter, Q2 2026, put national liveweight farmgate at ₱172.44/kg, and the DA said the national price had fallen to about ₱150/kg by August 2026 (Manila Times, 28 September 2026), against a cost of production that producer groups put at ₱180 to ₱190/kg in October (Daily Tribune, 2 October 2026). A vaccine reduces mortality risk. It does nothing for margin. Check what your own region is paying in the regional liveweight price table and the current price tracker before you decide a batch is worth restocking at all.
Free Tool
Pig Profit Simulator
Model a batch with and without a mortality event. The gap between 0% and 15% losses on a ten-head batch is usually bigger than the entire vaccine question.
Your next 30 days
The approval announcement has come. Do these five things before you buy a dose, in this order, and you will be better placed than the vaccine could make you.
- Get RSBSA-listed and BAI-registered this month if you are not. Free, one visit, and it is the gate for government vaccine campaigns, PCIC insurance and every restocking grant.
- Find out your barangay's current zone classification and write the date next to it. Re-check monthly. A Red zone moves you up any government vaccination list, and it changes what a positive test does to your sale.
- Fix the one biosecurity hole you already know about. Everyone has one. The gate nobody latches, the boots that go to the palengke, the neighbour who walks in to look at the pigs.
- Pre-write your outbreak phone list: municipal vet, provincial vet, DA regional field office. Tape it inside the feed room.
- If you fatten pigs, ask your municipal vet this week where the nearest BAI-accredited outlet is, whether it has stock, and who will write your prescription. Ask your vet how long before market day the last shot should go in, so a positive test cannot strand the batch.
And keep a healthy suspicion of timelines. Commercial release was floated for late 2024, then Q1 2026, then Q3 2026, the backyard subsidy is still only a ₱1 billion request for next year, and PROVAC is "could be next year". Believe a date when a vial is in your municipal vet's ref. Track the industry dashboard for the live case count rather than the promise count.
Bisaya / Cebuano
Niadtong 2 Septyembre 2026, gipahibalo sa DA nga gitugotan na sa BAI nga ibaligya ang AVAC ASF LIVE, para sa fattener lang. Matud ni Secretary Tiu Laurel, mapalit kini sa veterinary shop ug outlet nga accredited sa BAI kung moabot na ang stock. Wala pay presyo matag dose nga gipatik sa DA o BAI. Si Usec Palabrica nangayo og ₱1 bilyon sa sunod tuig aron ma-subsidize ang bakuna sa backyard, pero hangyo pa lang kini. Ang ikaduhang bakuna, ang PROVAC gikan sa South Korea, gisulayan pa sa BAI. Dili kini mapalit sa agri-vet store nga dili accredited. Kung naay magbaligya nimo online, ilegal na, ug delikado kay live virus kana nga wala nahibaw-an kung unsa pa ang kusog human sa dugay nga biyahe nga walay yelo.
Duha ka butang ang kinahanglan nimo masabtan. Una, para ra kini sa fattener, usa hangtod unom ka bulan ang edad sumala sa Manila Bulletin. Dili kini para sa anay, sa gilt, o sa boar. Mao nga kung breeder ka, ang imong pinakamahal nga hayop mao gyud ang dili maprotektahan. Ikaduha, ang proteksyon mokabat lang og mga lima ka bulan sumala sa DA Region 7, mao nga sakto ra kini sa usa ka grow out cycle, dili sa tibuok tuig.
Sa draft nga lagda sa BAI niadtong 25 Septyembre, kinahanglan una ang reseta sa lisensyadong beterinaryo sa dili pa ka makapalit. Human sa bakuna, i-file ang ASF Vaccination Card sulod sa 30 ka adlaw. Draft pa kini, mao nga pangutan-a ang municipal vet kung unsa ang lagda karon. Ug kung positibo ang test sa baboy nga nabakunahan, dili sa siya mabalhin o maihaw hangtod mahuman ang assessment, mao nga ayaw pagbakuna duol na kaayo sa adlaw sa baligya.
Ang pinakabag-ong national bulletin sa BAI, petsa 9 Oktubre 2026, nag-ihap og 226 ka aktibong barangay sa 24 ka probinsya. Ang pinakaubos 6 ka barangay sa 4 ka probinsya niadtong 22 Mayo 2026, dayon nisaka hangtod 293 ka barangay sa 31 ka probinsya niadtong 24 Septyembre.
Adto sa munisipyo, sa Municipal Agriculture Office. Pangutan-a kung asa ang pinakaduol nga accredited nga outlet, kung naa na bay stock, ug kinsa ang mosulat sa reseta. Dad-a ang inyong RSBSA number o BAI registration. Kung wala pa mo listed sa RSBSA, pa-listing dayon kay libre ra.
Bisan naa nay bakuna, ang biosecurity gihapon ang nagdala sa tanan. Ayaw pagpalit og baboy nga walay health certificate. Kwarentinahon ang bag-ong baboy sulod sa 30 ka adlaw. Ilisan ang footbath matag adlaw. Kung naay kalit nga namatay nga baboy, i report dayon sa munisipyo sulod sa 24 oras. Kana ang tinuod nga depensa, dili ang bakuna ra.
Related reading
- ASF recovery era biosecurity: the perimeter, footbath and sourcing system the vaccine does not replace
- Disease outbreak response, step by step: what to do in the first 48 hours
- Pig vaccination schedule: the shots you can actually buy today
- Pig diseases and symptoms: telling ASF apart from CSF and salmonella
- LGU permits and registration: getting RSBSA-listed and BAI-registered
- State of the industry dashboard: live case counts, herd size and farmgate prices
