Brussels urged Manila anew to lift the blanket import ban it imposed on pork products from Belgium last year following the outbreak of African swine fever (ASF), as Belgian traders have lost €4 million due to the trade restriction.
Instead of a blanket ban, Belgian Ambassador to the Philippines Michel Goffin said the embassy is urging Department of Agriculture (DA) officials to just restrict pork products from affected areas in Belgium.
Goffin said ASF struck mostly wild boars in the southern region of Wallonia in Belgium. Pork for domestic consumption and the export market, he said, is produced in Flanders in the north.
He also said Belgian authorities have already culled all domestic pigs and wild boars in ASF-affected areas and that the virus has not spread in the northern region of Belgium.
“We can say now it has been contained and no ASF virus has been spotted outside the zone. We are asking the Philippines to lift the country embargo because it is unfair,” he told the BusinessMirror in an interview.
“It is unfair to embargo the whole country when it was only a localized outbreak and has already been contained. It doesn’t make any sense and it is against the standards [of the World Organisation for Animal Health or OIE] and even against the spirit of the World Trade Organization,” Goffin added.
Belgium Embassy in Manila Trade Commissioner Mia Santamaria-Abela said the import ban on Belgian pork products has already caused a “major” impact on the European nation’s export revenues.
Belgium has not shipped any pork products to the Philippines since September. Pork products account for at least a quarter of Belgium’s revenues of €12 million from exports to the Philippines, Santamaria-Abela added.
“There was a 20-percent growth [in our pork exports revenues to the Philippines] from 2016 to 2017. The Philippines is a major market; it is one of the top 5 Asian markets [for Belgium],” she said.
Santamaria-Abela said some countries, such as Malaysia and Singapore, have already reconsidered their blanket ban on Belgian pork products and have adopted a “regionalized importation ban” instead.
Data provided by the embassy showed that Belgium’s pork exports to the Philippines reached nearly €12.9 million in 2017, from €10.72 million in 2016.
European Union Ambassador to the Philippines Franz Jessen told the BusinessMirror that the EU wants to address the import ban imposed on Belgian pork products through bilateral talks.
In fact, Goffin disclosed that the EU wrote a letter, which was signed by its commissioners on trade, health and agriculture, to Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol and Trade Secretary Ramon M. Lopez. The letter appealed to Philippine officals to reconsider the import ban.
“It said that the principle of regionalization should be the standard, as it is the international standard. So, it should be accepted [by the Philippines],” he said.
Goffin said Brussels is open to the possibility of inviting Philippine authorities to inspect and evaluate the measures undertaken by Belgium to control the outbreak of ASF.
On February 11 Belgium reported its 52nd ASF outbreak, which affected wild boars in a forest, to the OIE.
‘Prudence’
The Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) said, however, that the government is just being “prudent” when it imposed the blanket ban on Belgian pork products as ASF could cripple the P200-billion local hog industry.
“We have to protect the domestic hog industry,” BAI OIC-Director Ronnie D. Domingo told the BusinessMirror.
He said the OIE allows country some elbow room to implement precautionary measures such as imposing embargos, especially if the potential damage that may be caused by a disease or virus is huge.
Also, Domingo noted that the ASF virus found in Wallonia could easily be transferred to hog farms in Flanders, as the distance between the regions is only 200 kilometers.
The BAI official noted that ASF managed to spread in China even if hog farms were thousands of kilometers apart.
In response to the appeal of Belgium, Domingo said the BAI would seek more information from Brussels on the actions it has undertaken to contain ASF, particularly measures to ensure the safety of the Belgian animal feeds. This is because ASF could thrive even in animal feeds and plants, he said.
“We want to be guaranteed by other countries that even the plants that grew within the area of the affected farms have been secured or cleared of ASF,” he said.
“We want Belgium to prove that the source of their feed ingredients is safe. It’s true they have showed their laboratory results, biosecurity measures and control measures, are okay. But our other concerns include the handling of Belgium’s animal feeds,” he added.
The country’s pork imports from Belgium in 2018 declined by 7.34 percent to 13,995.328 metric tons, from 15,103.634 MT recorded in 2017, BAI data showed.
Image credits: Bloomberg News