By Madelaine B. Miraflor
In contrast with the claim of Philippine Association of Meat Processors Inc. (PAMPI) that there will not be enough hams and other pork products in Visayas and Mindanao during Christmas, some local government units (LGUs) from these areas assured their pork supply is more than enough for the next three months.
In fact, Central Visayas alone could supply the pork supply needs even of its neighboring provinces, a hog raiser said.
“There will be no pork shortage over the next three months,” Central Visayas Pork Producers President Rolando Tambago said. “Even in processed pork meat, we will not have any problem.
Amid the rising cases of African Swine Fever (ASF) in the country, more and more LGUs in Visayas and Mindanao have closed their doors on the entry of processed pork products coming from Luzon.
In the Philippines, ASF was first detected in August in Rizal province and had since then spread to other areas in Luzon, including Bulacan, Pampanga, Quezon City, Cavite, Nueva Ecija, Cavite, Pangasinan, and Antipolo.
To control the spread of the virus, around 65 LGUs in and out of Luzon already imposed a total and conditional ban on processed meat products. Some of these areas are Cebu, Bohol, Negros, Davao Oriental, Negros Occidental and Nueva Vizcaya.
This forced PAMPI to release a statement a few weeks ago, saying that “there will not be enough Christmas Hams and other pork-based products in the Visayas and Mindanao during the Christmas Festivities”.
“While Cebu and Cagayan de Oro have their own, ham production capabilities, their total production will not be able to supply the needs of the region unless the ban on Luzon-produced pork-based processed meats is rationalized,” PAMPI said.
As a response, Tambago said “for your information, in Cebu alone, we have major meat processors and some of them are even members of PAMPI so we don’t know what they are talking about.”
As for Negros, the province is technically “food secure” and it doesn’t need the processed pork supply coming from Luzon, an LGU official said.
“We have enough surplus in Negros,” Renante Decena, provincial veterinarian of Negros Occidental, said. “And we have 510,000 backyard pigs to protect.”
According to him, Negros has the largest number of individual backyard hog raisers in the country at 16,000, raising two to three pigs each.
Decena said that over the last weeks, there have been attempts to ship pork products to his province coming from Luzon.
As for Mindanao, former Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol said the region’s private sector is very much supportive of the decision of some LGUs to issue Executive Orders (EO) banning the entry of pork and processed pork products from areas affected by ASF.
This, according to him, was made “to protect the island's multi-billion peso hog industry and thousands of backyard hog farmers.”
Piñol now serves as the chair of Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA).
The supply is enough for us . In case there is excess, maybe we can serve Luzon as well,” said Chester Warren Tan, National Federation of Hog Farmers, Inc. (NFHFI) president.