Trade and Industry Secretary Ramon Lopez has called for the lifting of the import ban on poultry meat from Brazil to avoid shortage of locally canned meat and food and avert any price hikes of this important food category.
At the Laging Handa briefing, Lopez said he formally wrote to Agriculture Secretary William Dar to lift the import ban to resolve the issue.
Lopez supports the position of Philippine Association of Meat Processors Inc. (PAMPI) saying there was no basis in the importation ban of meat from Brazil because these are contaminated with COVID.
He said that PAMPI has only a month of raw materials for their canned food processing. If this issue is not resolved, this could lead to shortage in supply and price increases of canned food products.
Agriculture Secretary William Dar earlier this month issued a memorandum order mandating an importation ban as a "precautionary measure."
In a statement, PAMPI warned that prices of canned meat products might go up by up to 14 percent due
to potential supply shortage of their raw materials due to two import bans placed by the government against Brazilian and Australian poultry meat.
PAMPI Spokesperson Rex Agarrado said the tight supply of raw materials caused by the import ban would likely push up prices of canned meat products by 10 percent to 14 percent in the coming weeks.
Agarrado said that Brazil is the second largest supplier of MDM in the Philippines, accounting for 20 percent to 25 percent of the imported raw materials needed by meat processors to produce their products.
The Department of Agriculture (DA) issued Memorandum Order No. 39 two weeks ago imposing a temporary ban on the importation of poultry meat originating from Brazil, following reports that SARS-COV 2—the causative agent of Covid-19—was detected in a surface sampling conducted in chicken meat imported from Brazil to China.
Nevertheless, the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) Director Ronnie Domingo assured that despite the import ban, the Philippines will not have a shortage of poultry meat.
On MDM chicken, which the Philippines don’t necessarily produce amid lack of facilities, Domingo said the government will review the documents it asked from Brazilian meat producers to ensure that the products they are exporting to the Philippines are safe from COVID-19 virus.
PAMPI, however, argued saying that Section 10 of Republic Act No. 10611, or the Food Safety Act of 2013, provides that, “in specific circumstances when the available information for use in risk assessment is insufficient to show that a certain type of food or food products does not pose a risk to consumer health, precautionary measures shall be adopted.”
PAMPI said while the DA based its decision on reports in China that SARS-COV 2 was found in Chicken wings imported from Brazil, China itself did not impose a ban on Brazil products, after finding out that the virus RNA or nucleic acid did not cause any infection on humans.