Food security advocacy group Tugon Kabuhayan has joined calls for the Department of Agriculture (DA) to lift the ban on the importation of porcine processed animal protein (PAP) – a key ingredient for producing fish feeds.
The groups said lifting the ban will ensure that the local aquaculture industry could continue producing affordable fish for Filipino consumers.
The DA imposed the import ban after a wild boar in Italy reportedly tested positive for the African Swine Fever virus. Philippine aqua feeds manufacturers source from Italy around 70 percent of the 150,000 metric tons of imported PAP to manufacture fish feeds a year.
Tugon Kabuhayan Convenor Atty. Asis Perez, former executive director of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, said the blanket ban imposed by the DA should at least be modified to exempt PAP imports intended as raw material for aquaculture industry feeds since it doesn’t pose threats to the local swine industry.
“PAP is made from food-grade meat including bones, skin and blood and fall under the European Union’s Category 3 meat classification, which means they come from disease-free animals,” said Perez.
A graduate of veterinary medicine, he is also knowledgeable with the science of viruses and microorganisms as well as European and World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) rules and safety standards.
“To make PAP powder, the mixture of meat and other animal parts is processed at 130 degrees Celsius, almost double the 70 degrees Celsius at which the ASF virus is killed. During the feed manufacturing process, PAP is further ‘cooked’ at temperatures reaching 200 degrees Celsius to make floating fish food,” he explained.
Philippine animal feeds manufacturers produce around 1.6 million metric tons of feeds for the aquaculture industry, which account for 800,000 metric tons of fish, or 40 percent of annual fish consumption.
The high protein supplied by PAP compared to other protein sources allows for higher feed conversion and reduces water pollution caused by fish.
Perez expressed concerns that maintaining the import ban could have detrimental effects on the aquaculture and feeds manufacturing industries and raise the price of fish sold in the market.
“The biggest impact of the ban on imported PAP from Italy is the higher cost of aquaculture feeds. Every P1.00 of additional feed cost, roughly translates to over P2.00 per kilo of fish because a fish farmer needs two kilos of feeds for a fish to reach one kilo,” he noted.
PAP contains up to 90 percentprotein, much higher than the levels supplied by other protein sources like vegetable or fish meal.
Lower protein means higher amounts of feeds are needed to grow fish to harvestable size. This leads to increased fish effluents that pollute water resources—something frowned upon under environmental regulations.
Perez said using other fish species as feed to grow other commercial species isn’t viable because it takes much more to produce one fish. He cited as example Lapu-lapu which requires between 7 to 9 kilos of fish meal for its body weight to reach one kilo.
The Philippines, like other major aquaculture producing countries, has been using porcine PAP since 2008 due to inadequate supply of local fish meal or processed fish scraps to meet the requirements of the growing aquaculture industry worldwide.
The war between Russia and Ukraine also worsened the situation with the shortage of wheat and other grains for animal feeds.
“We understand that the swine industry needs to be protected. But a blanket ban on imported PAP from Italy because of a single ASF-infected wild boar isn’t backed by science. And if there’s no strong scientific basis, why make the aquaculture industry and, consequently, fish consumers suffer?” Perez stressed.