SEN. Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan on Wednesday said the inclusion of a P1-billion Bio-Safe biosecurity enforcement program in the proposed 2026 budget of the Department of Agriculture (DA) is a crucial step toward preventing smuggling, animal disease outbreaks, and food supply disruptions before they escalate into price shocks and shortages. “The line item aims to strengthen disease surveillance, border controls, and on-ground enforcement against threats such as African swine fever (ASF) and avian influenza. These outbreaks have previously driven up food prices and wiped out livelihoods,” Pangilinan said. Pangilinan is a member of the bicameral conference committee reconciling the national budget and serves as vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance. He also chairs the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Food and Agrarian Reform. The Bio-Safe program institutionalizes biosafety, biosecurity, and surveillance (BSS&S) measures across the agriculture sector, covering crops, livestock, poultry, and fisheries. The program applies to farms, laboratories, quarantine stations, slaughterhouses, and other agricultural facilities. It is designed to prevent the entry and spread of animal and plant diseases that can cripple food production. Under the BSS&S system, the DA issues standardized containment and response protocols, strengthens disease surveillance and reporting, and upgrades engineering controls in facilities handling biological materials. For livestock operations, biosecurity measures may include perimeter fencing, controlled farm access, climate-regulated animal housing, proper waste management systems, and sanitation facilities such as shower-in and shower-out areas for workers. “As they say, ‘Prevention is better than cure.’ Every outbreak we fail to prevent becomes a huge price Filipino families are forced to pay,” Pangilinan said. The senator cited past food emergencies as evidence that delayed responses are far more costly than early prevention, both in terms of public spending and household welfare. African swine fever alone wiped out an estimated five million pigs nationwide, caused losses of at least P200 billion, and reduced the country’s hog inventory by more than 20 percent. The resulting supply shock pushed pork inflation to about 20 percent in 2021 and kept retail prices elevated and volatile in the years that followed. While pork remained safe for consumption, weak biosecurity and market controls left consumers paying higher prices, while many backyard hog raisers lost entire herds and breeding stock. Avian influenza outbreaks have similarly strained food security and farmer incomes. Since 2017, authorities have culled hundreds of thousands of poultry upon detection of highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza in multiple regions, triggering temporary shortages and spikes in chicken and egg prices. “We always scramble after the damage is done. This budget seeks to stop the damage from happening at all,” Pangilinan said. Beyond disease prevention, Pangilinan said the Bio-Safe program also plays an important role in curbing agricultural smuggling by tightening sanitary and phytosanitary controls on imports. Enhanced inspection, testing, and quarantine measures improve detection rates at entry points, making it more difficult for illegally imported or misdeclared agricultural goods to access domestic markets. Effective implementation, he added, will require close coordination between the DA and the Bureau of Customs, particularly in cases involving large-scale smuggling and economic sabotage.