April 25, 2012
 

Philippine hog farmers urges government to remove sales hour regulation

About 100,000 commercial and backyard hog farmers in the Philippines have signed a petition to scrap the administrative order that limit the sale of pork to eight hours after the pig has been slaughtered.

The petition says Administrative Order 5 which was implemented by the Department of Agriculture favoured meat importers as it requires that freshly slaughtered meat no longer be sold as such in the wet markets after eight hours have passed, and must be turned into processed products such as sausages.

Abono partylist representative and Swine Development Council director Rosendo So said the mandate is "inconsistent", adding that "how can meat be declared no longer fit for human consumption when that same meat will also be made into sausages while the fresh meat be eaten raw."

So says the petition will also be submitted to the House and Senate to lobby Congress to put a stop to smuggling and the massive meat importation that are crippling the local industry.

The Swine Development Council, an umbrella organization of all hog raiser groups and allied industries, is also sending the petition to their members in Mindanao.

According to So, the 100,000 signatures so far are only from the farm owners in the Luzon and the Visayas. Mindanao is severely hit because their problem is aggravated by the rolling blackouts.

In their petition, the hog growers say AO 5 could not be implemented nationwide because of the lack of triple A slaughterhouses prescribed by the administrative order.

So says the order requires all meat to be slaughtered in AAA slaughterhouses so that the meat can pass inspection. But there are only five triple A slaughterhouses and 200 registered slaughterhouses nationwide to cater to 1,512 municipalities and 122 cities.

The petition says 70 percent of the supply of meat comes from backyard growers, and that fresh meat can last up to 12 hours.

The hog raisers had earlier accused the President of buckling under US pressure to scrap an earlier administrative order that imposed restrictions on frozen meat, most of which is imported. The hog raisers also asked the government to reinstate the 40-percent tariff on imported pork offal to discourage technical smuggling. They say meat importers are passing off choice meat cuts as offal to avoid paying higher tariffs.

The Philippines' major sources of pork offal are the United States and Canada.

So said the duty used to be 40 percent but was brought down to 5 percent as a concession for extending the quantitative restriction on rice traded under the World Trade Organization or WTO in 2007.

So, who is also chairman of the Abono party-list, says the hog raisers group has already submitted a petition before the Tariff Commission to restore the previous tariff rate.