The Philippines may lose its Japan export market for poultry products if the country will not be cleared from avian influenza (AI) at the soonest possible time, according to the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI).
Citing industry reports, BAI Animal Health and Welfare Division Chief Dr. Arlyn Vytiaco said Japan may be forced to source its chicken imports from other countries next year to fill in the supply void left by the Philippines after it was banned from exporting poultry products to Tokyo.
“The cold storages have been communicating with me, and they are saying that their problem is that if it takes us so long to be AI free, then we may lose our market for yakitori,” Vytiaco told reporters in an interview on Monday.
“It’s been since August that we are banned from exporting yakitori. And, if this remains for so long, then the countries could source imports from other markets, like Thailand,” Vytiaco added.
Tokyo banned poultry and poultry products from Manila after the latter confirmed its first-ever case of AI in August.
Vytiaco said Japan has been in constant communication with BAI to ask for updates and monitor the country’s bird-flu status.
However, even before AI struck Central Luzon, Philippine chicken exports have been declining as government data indicated a double-digit drop in the volume of outbound shipments in the January-to-July period.
Data from the BAI obtained by the BusinessMirror showed the country’s chicken-meat exports during the seven-month period reached 2,609.374 metric tons (MT), 12.23 percent lower than last year’s 2,973.064 MT. BAI data indicated that Japan was the sole buyer of chicken products exported by the Philippines during the period.
Last year the Philippines shipped 5,000.121 MT of chicken meat, the bulk of which, or 4,965.020 MT, was bought by Japan.
However, exporters would have to wait until the first quarter of 2018 for the Philippines to regain its bird flu-free status, after a new case of AI was discovered in Cabiao, Nueva Ecija.
The discovery of AI in a layer farm in Cabiao, Nueva Ecija, reset the country’s countdown to bird flu-free status. Under the Terrestrial Animal Health Code of the World Organization for Animal Heath, or OIE, a country will only be declared free from bird flu if it would not report any outbreak within 90 days after the final disinfection of the affected areas.
Vytiaco said the Philippines may notify the OIE that it is bird flu-free as early as March next year. Vytiaco added that BAI is eyeing to finish the cleaning and disinfection in the AI-affected farm in Cabiao, Nueva Ecija before Christmas.
“[We] are on track to finish the cleaning and disinfection before Christmas. So the earliest possible week for us to be bird flu-free is by third week of March,” she said.
Earlier, BAI Officer in Charge Ronnie D. Domingo said the government wanted to notify the OIE that the Philippines is already bird flu-free by December 20, more than four months after the virus was discovered in San Luis, Pampanga.
At present, Philippine poultry exports are banned in a number of countries, including Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. The ban was imposed after the government announced in mid-August that bird flu struck Pampanga and Nueva Ecija.
On December 1 Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol confirmed that a poultry farm in Cabiao, Nueva Ecija, was hit by bird flu, resulting in the culling of at least 40,000 layers.