An official from Brazil, one of the world's top meat suppliers, is hoping that the Philippine government will take back its decision to temporarily ban the entry of poultry meat coming from the Latin American country as it lacks basis.
Ricardo Santin, Brazilian Association of Animal Protein (ABPA) Chief Executive Officer, said the decision of Agriculture Secretary William Dar to temporarily suspend the importation of poultry meat from Brazil — following reports that Chinese authorities detected COVID-19 in the surface of frozen chicken imported from the Latin American country — has "no basis" and is not "science-based".
"It is a pity that the Philippines took this action," Santin told Business Bulletin. "I hope they change their idea or we could ask for some reasonable explanation on WTO [World Trade
Organization]".
ABPA is the political and institutional representative of poultry and pork production in Brazil, one of the largest food producing countries in the world.
The organization is composed of 140 companies and entities from the various poultry and swine farming community in Brazil.
As a precautionary measure, Dar last Friday imposed a temporary ban on the importation of poultry meat from Brazil after COVID-19 was detected on chicken wings imported from the Latin American country to Shenzhen, China.
For issuing the order, Dar cited the Section 10 of Republic Act 10611, or the Food Safety Act of 2013.
The law particularly states that "in specific circumstances when the available relevant information use for in risk assessment is insufficient to show that a certain type of food or food product does not pose a risk to consumer health, precautionary measures shall be adopted."
The Philippines is currently one of the biggest markets for Brazilian poultry and pork meat. During the first half of this year, the Philippines imported a total of 64.2 million kilos of all types of meat from Brazil. Of this, 43.27 million kilos are chicken meat.
The World Health Organization (WHO) already said before that there is no evidence to support transmission of the COVID-19 virus associated with food.
According to National Meat Inspection Service (NMIS) Executive Director Rieldrin Morales, the Philippine government issued the aforementioned importation ban in the context that a lot of workers in Brazil’s meat establishments may have contracted the virus and that it's not necessarily because the Philippine government believes food items like frozen chicken could be a direct carrier of the virus.
“FAO and WHO already provided technical guidance saying that COVID-19 transmission through bio food items like meat is ‘zero to negligible’,” Morales said.
“Now, we are saying that the basis of our ban is we just want to find out the health status of workers in those foreign meat establishments. We are not concerned that your products can transmit the virus. We are concerned about your workers if they have the virus,” he added.
WHO has reported that there are more than 3 million confirmed COVID-19 cases in Brazil with 103,026 deaths.