THE ban or restrictions on the sale and distribution of processed pork products is forcing some meat processing companies to downsize operations and lay off workers, the Philippine Association of Meat Processors Inc. (Pampi) said on Thursday.
Pampi made the statement after Laguna banned all pork products due to the outbreak of African swine fever (ASF). The group noted that Laguna is the 65th province to impose what it described as an arbitrary ban.
With this, Pampi urged the Department of Agriculture (DA) to disclose how the ASF virus spread from a piggery in Montalban, Rizal.
Pampi President Felix O. Tiukinhoy said member-companies are being forced to draw contingency measures to stay in business.
“These measures include downsizing operations and sending workers on a furlough or permanent layoff,” he said.
The group said only the provinces in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) did not impose the ban as most of the residents there don’t eat pork.
In imposing such bans on processed pork products, local government units (LGUs) ignored scientific evidence that processed products which are cooked at high temperatures are incapable of spreading the ASF virus, Pampi said.
The group said the ASF scare is “killing the Philippine swine industry” which had a population of 12.78 million heads as of July 2018. The Philippines is the world’s eighth- largest pork producer.
Also, Pampi added that their products are cooked or steamed at temperatures over and above the cooking standard of 70 degree Celsius for 30 minutes set by the World Organisation for Animal Health to destroy the ASF virus.
Because of the ban, Tiukinhoy said Pampi members “stopped purchases of pork materials since the finished products can no longer be sold.”
“We do not want to expose ourselves to further risks by using locally sourced pork that could be laden with ASF. There could be unscrupulous suppliers who could pass off meat from ASF-infected pigs,” he said.
Tiukinhoy added that the ASF virus could easily spread because of the nature of the local hog industry.
“Even in the Visayas and Mindanao, it is not safe to buy pork materials, even without ASF, because of the presence of so many backyard raisers. Some big hog companies there buy from backyard raisers when they cannot meet the demand. We believe they should voluntarily have their pigs tested for ASF, too, to assure the public,” he said.
Meat processors also clarified that ASF does not pose a threat to humans, but could decimate the swine population.
ASF is a highly contagious hemorrhagic viral disease affecting domestic and wild pigs of all ages. It is characterized by high fever, loss of appetite, hemorrhage in the skin and internal organs, often resulting in death. There is no vaccine or treatment against ASF.
Processed meats are being blamed for the outbreak of ASF in Luzon, although experts from the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) suspected that swill feeding of pigs may have caused the outbreak.
BAI experts said ASF can be transmitted by direct contact, ingestion of garbage/swill feeds containing unprocessed infected pig meat or pig meat products, ticks and biting flies or contaminated premises, vehicles, equipment and clothing.
About 65 percent of hog raisers in the Philippines are backyard growers who do not regularly subject their animals to veterinary inspection and who mainly rely on swill for feeds. The ASF virus can be easily carried by flies that swarm pork cuts in wet markets to backyard piggeries.
‘Scapegoating’
For his part, Magsasaka Party-list Rep. Argel Cabatbat said the local boycott does not contribute to solving the problem at hand, and it continuously hurts the hog-raising industry, which are mostly made up of small players “who are doing honest work to survive day by day.”
He said members of Pampi need to be reminded that the likelihood of the ASF originating from imported pork is greater than the virus coming from local ones.
“The call to punish the local industry is a form of scapegoating, especially that the call comes from an organization which sources most of its meat abroad,” he said.
“Billions of pesos in capital have been lost in the past couple of months because of the spread of the ASF, as well as the panic and misinformation that came with it. Our local players consistently cooperate with authorities, and have instituted stringent measures to protect the interests and safety of the buying public,” he added.