Newcastle Disease in Chickens: Notifiable Here, and Uncompensated

• Is Newcastle disease notifiable in the Philippines? Yes, and it has been since 31 January 2012. Three instruments say so, and the shortest of the three gives you twenty-four hours.
• Who do I tell? The Veterinary, Agriculturist or Health Office of your LGU, the DA Regional Field Office, or BAI through its Animal Health and Welfare Division. Any one of them discharges it.
• Do I have to know it is Newcastle first? No. The trigger written into the circular is an unusual cluster of signs or more deaths than expected, with the cause still unknown.
• Will anybody pay for the birds? No. The 2025 cash assistance order covers nine diseases and Newcastle disease is not one of them.
• Where is the dose? There is none. No Philippine standard, circular or order read for this page carries a dose, a dilution or a volume for any Newcastle vaccine.

Assembling those five answers took four government issuances and a WOAH database, at wala pong isa sa kanila ang lumalabas kapag hinanap mo ito sa Google. The pillar on Philippine chicken diseases works through what a laboratory settles and what the bird flu paperwork asks; ito naman ang kabilang kalahati, your position when the answer that comes back is Newcastle.

What makes it notifiable, and since when?

The oldest of the three is BAI Administrative Order No. 01, series of 2012, adopted on 31 January 2012 and signed by Agriculture Secretary Proceso J. Alcala. It declares a list of notifiable diseases whose occurrence “should be reported to the BAI director for proper investigation, diagnosis and control”, and under the heading Avian diseases one of the bullets reads: Newcastle disease. It closes by enjoining LGU veterinarians to report outbreaks in their areas to the Chief Veterinary Officer.

Twelve years later, BAI Memorandum Circular No. 30, series of 2024, issued 11 June 2024 and signed by OIC-Director Hyacinth G. Napiloy, DVM, MPS-PA, supplies the part AO 01 left implicit. Its § 4.1.3 defines a notifiable animal disease as one that “must be reported within twenty-four (24) hours to the NVA”, the National Veterinary Authority; § 5.5.5, under Aves, names Newcastle disease as a BAI priority animal disease; and § 8.3 sets the route, verbatim: reports “shall be directly reported to the Veterinary/ Agriculturist/ Health Offices of the Local Government Units (LGUs), DA-Regional Field Offices (DA-RFOs), and BAI through AHWD for disease investigation and confirmation”.

Read § 8.2 next, because it decides whether any of this ever reaches you. “Any unusual clustering of similar symptoms or more than the perceived mortalities and morbidities that are yet unknown in origin shall also be considered notifiable.” Walang pangalan ng sakit doon. The obligation starts at a pattern in your kulungan, and § 4.5 widens it further: all animal diseases are to be reported whether or not the circular lists them.

The third is BAI Memorandum Circular No. 21, series of 2025, issued 16 June 2025, which sorts those priority diseases into categories. Table 4.1 puts Newcastle disease first under Rapidly Spreading Diseases (R), and Table 5.2 says what the category obliges: a herd-level vaccination and prophylaxis program where applicable, and containment and control protocols.

Both circulars are scanned images rather than live text, kaya kahit anong salita ang hanapin mo sa loob ng PDF ay wala kang makikita. You are reading pictures of pages.

Above all of it sits the country’s own international obligation. WOAH’s Terrestrial Animal Health Code lists “Infection with Newcastle disease virus” among avian diseases in Chapter 1.3, and Article 1.1.3 gives a Veterinary Authority 24 hours to notify a first occurrence in a country or zone. Chapter 10.9 defines poultry to include backyard poultry outright, so twenty manok sa bakuran sit inside the definition the country reports against.

Sino ba talaga ang tatawagan mo?

Ranked by what a keeper with no vehicle and no vet within reach can reach on the day:

• The barangay official, or the Municipal or City Agriculture Office. This is the route with a record of working. The Bohol outbreak investigation states that “on 5 Mar 2013, the OPV received a report from the Municipal Agriculture Office (MAO) of Valencia, Bohol about massive deaths of native chickens in four villages” (Tapdasan et al., OSIR 2015).
• The Provincial, City or Municipal Veterinary, Agriculturist or Health Office. MC 30 § 8.3 and § 9.1 name these first.
• The DA Regional Field Office. § 9.2 has the local office verify and pass it up to the DA-RFO in coordination with the Regional Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory.
• BAI directly, through the Animal Health and Welfare Division.

There is no national Newcastle disease hotline. What exists is a switchboard: the letterhead of both circulars carries (+632)8528-2240 and [email protected] for the Bureau of Animal Industry at 5 Visayas Avenue, Barangay Vasra, Quezon City. Trunkline po iyon at ang inbox ng Director, hindi disease line, and a keeper who calls it expecting one and meets a busy tone often decides none of this is worth the effort. Sa barangay at sa munisipyo ka magsimula.

Mapagkakaiba mo ba ito sa bird flu sa loob ng kulungan?

Not from the birds, and the answer matters less than the checklist pages imply. The naming problem is not yours to solve, and nothing you owe anybody waits on it. MC 30 § 8.2 triggers the report on the pattern; the swab, the laboratory and the category are the state’s side. Ang tanging binabago ng pangalan ay kung ano ang mangyayari sa iyo pagkatapos, at doon nagkakalayo ang dalawa nang husto.

Newcastle disease also does not present as one thing. Merck’s velogenic viscerotropic form runs at up to 100% morbidity and mortality, and the velogenic neurotropic form at up to 100% morbidity with 50% mortality, reaching 90% in young birds. The mesogenic form drops egg production that returns to normal in a few weeks; the lentogenic form can be subclinical. Iisang virus, apat na mukha, and no way to place your own flock on that scale by looking at it.

On the question keepers ask about themselves, Merck and the Bohol investigators agree: the strains can produce a transitory conjunctivitis in people, mostly in laboratory workers and vaccination teams handling large quantities of virus, and there is no evidence of human-to-human spread.

Side by side, on the same publisher’s pages for the two diseases:

Both columns are from the MSD Veterinary Manual, the Newcastle page and the avian influenza page, read on 21 August 2026. The Newcastle page instructs that the acute form “should be differentiated from other diseases known to cause high mortality rates with sudden death, or lethargy and respiratory signs, such as highly pathogenic avian influenza”.

Bakit namatay pa rin ang mga binakunahang manok?

Because the vaccine is no wall, and the reference recommending it says so in the same breath. Merck records that “Newcastle disease vaccines do not provide sterile immunity”, that a well vaccinated bird may look clinically normal apart from a fall in lay while still shedding virus, and that “it has been suggested that currently used vaccines are not effective against genotype VII vNDVs”.

The Philippine measurement of that sits in the Philippine Journal of Veterinary Medicine, 54(1):17-26. Umali and colleagues characterised the virus behind five clinical cases in vaccinated commercial layer farms across four provinces, in birds showing conjunctivitis, gasping, facial swelling, lethargy, torticollis and paralysis. Mortality ran 15 to 61%. Every field strain was velogenic, all in class II genotype VII, with up to 99% similarity to virulent variants emerging elsewhere in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

One link in that chain is weaker than the rest. Merck names B1 and LaSota as the strains in wide use and records the suggestion about genotype VII; putting the two together as your vaccine against this virus is my inference and no sourced finding. The Umali sample is also from 2017, so anything telling you what genotype is circulating in your province this month is claiming more than the published Philippine record can support.

What that leaves is narrower. Vaccination is worth asking a veterinarian about and it is no reason to relax the gate, kasi ang binabawasan nito ay ang bilang ng namamatay at hindi ang virus mismo. The one published Philippine schedule by age, Annex F of PNS/BAFS 370:2023, is labelled (Informative), attributes itself to an undated “(Cruz, n.d.)”, and confines vaccination to a licensed veterinarian’s supervision; its later Newcastle entries name layers and breeders only. The whole of what the state publishes on schedules is six rows, and none of them carries a dose.

Saan ito pumapasok sa bakuran?

With new birds, and the best Philippine evidence for that is an outbreak among people who were given them.

In February 2013 a government native-chicken dispersal programme in four barangays of Valencia, Bohol seeded an outbreak that ran until 25 May. Investigators from the Office of the Provincial Veterinarian, FETP-V, FAO and CLSU worked 47 recipient farms and found 36 affected, 76.6%, “all were smallholders with less than 60 birds”. The median flock held 20 manok, and 46.8% held fewer than twenty. Serology on ill birds with no vaccination history came back 91.3% positive, 21 of 23 samples, at the regional laboratory in Cebu.

The risk factor the study isolated was parent stock introduced on 28 February 2013, odds ratio 19.2, and the paper names its own limitation: the small sample is the likely reason for a confidence interval running from 3.50 to 105.87, which is wide enough that the direction is the finding rather than the size. The birds came from live bird markets on a neighbouring island, moved with no shipping permit and no veterinary health certificate, through a sub-port with no quarantine officer.

Those markets show up again in Batangas. Resplandor and Umali (2018) tested native chickens from selected live bird markets and found 48 of 49 sera, 97.96%, positive for NDV antibodies, while all 76 swab samples and 49 pooled tissue samples came back negative on nested RT-PCR, in birds that looked well. The authors read that as earlier exposure to virulent virus in birds that had recovered. Neither the 97.96% nor Bohol’s 91.3% is a national backyard figure, kasi pareho silang galing sa piling grupo ng manok.

One more number from Bohol: 89.4% of the 47 farms, 42 of them, practised no vaccination, and 76.6% were free-raising. Bumili ng bagong manok sa palengke, ihalo agad sa kawan, at iyon ang buong kuwento. Separating new arrivals is the one change that follows from it.

What does the country’s own record actually hold?

Two events. That is the entire Philippine Newcastle disease record in WOAH’s animal health information system: one beginning 22 December 2015 and now resolved, one beginning 13 February 2026 and still open. This site holds 251 Philippine avian influenza outbreak dates from the same system.

The 2026 one is close to home. Follow-up report 182392 puts it in Brgy. Imelda, Samal, Bataan, epidemiological unit type Backyard, outbreak running 13 to 28 February 2026, causal agent Paramyxovirus type 1, 5 cases, confirmed positive by real-time PCR at BAI’s Animal Disease Diagnosis and Reference Laboratory on 24 February. Clinical signs on the report: NO. Confirmation came 11 days after the outbreak start date, on a report whose clinical-signs field is empty.

Read the rest with care, kasi madaling gawing mas malaki ito kaysa sa totoo. Susceptible, deaths, killed, slaughtered and vaccinated are all blank in the published record, at ang blangko ay hindi zero. The report’s own epidemiological comments say the event “is created to harmonise the reporting strategy of the disease between the animal disease events module and the six-monthly report module of WAHIS”, so part of what this is, is bookkeeping. The 5 cases are no national toll.

Set that against Tapdasan et al., who state that here the disease “occurs all year round in all 81 provinces”. Two notified events against 81 provinces of year-round presence describes what a notification system counts. Nobody publishes the other number either: no national case count, no mortality toll, no economic loss figure in any Philippine source read for this page, and no weekly panel of the kind BAI redraws for bird flu restrictions. That absence is recorded in the gaps register.

So what does it cost you when it turns out to be Newcastle?

The state keeps a file on each of these two diseases, and the two do not read alike.

The peso rows come from DA Administrative Order No. 04, series of 2025, whose § 6 rate table reads ₱200.00 per head for layers and ₱60.00 for broilers, and whose § 4.A.2 gives a farm registered under Animal Facility Registration or the RSBSA the full prescribed amount while a non-registered farm receives 20%. Set that layer rate against the one the pillar quotes, ₱100.00, from DA Administrative Order No. 37 s. 2020 as reproduced in BAI’s bird flu manual. AO 04 s. 2025 is the later issuance and it doubles that rate; read the 2025 order as the current one, and check for a newer administrative order before you rely on either.

None of it reaches a Newcastle flock. Section 3.A lists nine diseases, avian influenza first, and Newcastle disease is on none of them. The one door left ajar is § 3.C, for an incursion of an exotic, emerging or re-emerging disease the Secretary recognises as a threat to public health, food safety or food security. A disease occurring year-round in all 81 provinces is no incursion.

So the asymmetry lands like this. The Bureau’s own categorisation says Newcastle disease moves faster than avian influenza, and its answer to the faster one was vaccination and movement control on a five-bird backyard flock in Bataan, with no weekly panel, no national count and no line in the cash assistance order. Ang sakit na mismong estado ang nagsabing mas mabilis kumalat ay iyon ding sakit na buo mong pasan mag-isa. Kapag bird flu, may ₱4,000 na darating sa dalawampung inahing rehistrado at ₱800 kung hindi. When it is Newcastle, what is left is the call to the barangay, an empty coop, and the next batch out of your own pocket.

Which is why the twenty-four hours and the separation pen for new birds are worth more here than they are for bird flu. Sa bird flu, may bahagi ang estado sa gastos. Dito, ikaw lang.

Cite this page

Every figure here carries the source it came from and the date it was read. If you use one, this is the line that says where it came from.

A backyard poultry keeper. "Newcastle Disease in Chickens: Notifiable Here, and Uncompensated". Manoknomics. Published August 22, 2026. https://manoknomics.com/articles/newcastle-disease-philippines

Select the text to copy it.

Questions people actually ask

Is Newcastle disease notifiable in the Philippines?

Yes, under three separate instruments that stack. BAI Administrative Order No. 01, series of 2012, adopted 31 January 2012 and signed by Agriculture Secretary Proceso J. Alcala, declares a list of notifiable diseases whose occurrence "should be reported to the BAI director", and Newcastle disease appears on it under the heading Avian diseases. BAI Memorandum Circular No. 30, series of 2024, issued 11 June 2024, names Newcastle disease at § 5.5.5 as a BAI priority animal disease, defines a notifiable disease at § 4.1.3 as one that "must be reported within twenty-four (24) hours to the NVA", and at § 8.3 sends the report to the Veterinary, Agriculturist or Health Offices of the LGU, the DA Regional Field Offices, or BAI through its Animal Health and Welfare Division. BAI Memorandum Circular No. 21, series of 2025, issued 16 June 2025, then sorts the priority diseases into categories, and Newcastle disease is the first entry under Rapidly Spreading Diseases in its Table 4.1.

Is there compensation if Newcastle disease kills my flock in the Philippines? Show the answer

No. DA Administrative Order No. 04, series of 2025, the guidelines on granting cash assistance for farmers affected by emerging, re-emerging and transboundary animal diseases, lists nine covered diseases at § 3.A. Highly pathogenic avian influenza is the first of them and Newcastle disease is on none of the nine. The only opening left is § 3.C, which allows the Secretary to consider an incursion of an exotic, emerging or re-emerging disease, and Newcastle disease is endemic here rather than an incursion. The same order sets the rate table at § 6, ₱200.00 per head for layers and ₱60.00 for broilers, and § 4.A.2 gives a registered farm the maximum and a non-registered one 20% of the prescribed rate. Those rates are what a covered disease draws; Newcastle disease draws none of it.

Why did my vaccinated chickens still die of Newcastle disease? Show the answer

Because a Newcastle vaccine is not a wall. The MSD Veterinary Manual records that "Newcastle disease vaccines do not provide sterile immunity", that well vaccinated birds may look clinically normal apart from a drop in lay while still shedding virus in saliva and feces, and that "it has been suggested that currently used vaccines are not effective against genotype VII vNDVs". Umali et al. (2017) in the Philippine Journal of Veterinary Medicine 54(1):17-26 characterised the virus behind five clinical cases in vaccinated commercial layer farms across four Philippine provinces, measured mortality of 15 to 61%, and found every field strain velogenic and in class II genotype VII. That sample is from 2017, so it is evidence of what was circulating then rather than a statement about this month, and the dose, the product and the programme come from a licensed veterinarian.

How many Newcastle disease outbreaks are there in the Philippines? Show the answer

Nobody publishes a national count. The Philippines has notified two Newcastle disease events in the whole of the WOAH animal health information system: one starting 22 December 2015 and now resolved, and one starting 13 February 2026 in Brgy. Imelda, Samal, Bataan, a backyard flock with 5 cases confirmed by real-time PCR at BAI Animal Disease Diagnosis and Reference Laboratory on 24 February 2026. That second report says in its own epidemiological comments that it "is created to harmonise the reporting strategy of the disease between the animal disease events module and the six-monthly report module of WAHIS", so it is partly an administrative record and its 5 cases are not a national toll. Against that, Tapdasan et al. (2015) in OSIR 8(1):1-6 state the disease "occurs all year round in all 81 provinces". Two events and 81 provinces are both true, which tells you what the notification record is measuring.