August 15, 2012

Indonesia's frozen beef, live cattle imports regulations to change

In the midst of an uproar over the circulation of illegal beef imports here in the run-up to the Idul Fitri holidays, the House of Representatives (DPR) legislative body is quietly preparing a bill to change the rules on how beef imports should be managed in this country. The uproar relates to current cattle import limitations, and specifically to illegal imports of frozen beef from India, a country which is not completely free from foot-and-mouth (FMD) disease, a severe plague for animal farming which is highly infectious.

The academic draft of the bill prepared by the DPR has been finalised. If all goes well, the DPR on its own initiative will forward this bill for deliberations, in hopes that it should replace Law No. 18 of 2009 on Animal Husbandry.

The key point of this bill is changing the nature of beef imports from a country-based classification to a zone-based system, so that Indonesia can accept beef imports from FMD-free zones - states or regions - within a nation like India or Brazil. With Indonesia's current country-based classification, it is forbidden to import cattle from any country suffering from FMD in any one of its regions. However, with the zone-based classification, the ban only extends to states affected by the disease. Cattle and frozen beef can still be imported from the FMD-free zones of that nation.

Chair of the House Commission on Agriculture Muhammad Romahurmuziy says that DPR and the government have informally agreed to prioritise discussions on the draft and has included it in the National Legislation Programme, or the 2012 Prolegnas priority list of bills. In the last two years, the Ministry of Agriculture has been aggressively campaigning the need for such a revision. Minister of Agriculture Suswono brought this up again in mid-July, after a coordination meeting on food security at the Coordinating Ministry for Economic Affairs.

According to Suswono, the changes to the system will be at the initiative of the DPR. "We're waiting. The position of the government is drawing up an inventory list of the problems," he said two weeks ago.