Government regulation hounds livestock sector

Government regulation and its lack of support for the local livestock industry, including manufacturers of local vaccines and veterinary medicines are the current debilitating issues raised at a recent forum of the Philippine Agricultural Journalists at the Aresi Restaurant in Quezon city.

The forum, sponsored by Tryco Pharmaceutical Inc. and Xylena Farms, also served as the venue for Philippine Association of Meat Processors Inc. (PAMPI) executive director Francisco Buencamino to voice the group’s objection to pending legislative measures in both chambers of Congress that limits importation of manufacturing grade meat only to countries that have been certified free from foot-and-mouth disease (FMD). PAMPI is composed of 38 companies with combined annual sales of P40 billion.

Buencamino says the two versions of the bills, if passed into law, will prohibit importation of meat for processing from the current source in India for quality but cheap carabeef. Foreign sourcing will, thus, be limited to Australia and the United States, whose manufacturing grade meats are very expensive.

These measures, according to Buencamino which are being lobbied by local swine and cattle raisers in a bid to force meat processors to source only from local production, will push prices so high that consumers might not be able to afford processed meat anymore.

He explains, further, that cattle growers and hog raisers sell their animals as carcasses for the local fresh meat market and do not have the capacity to supply manufacturing grade meat to the local meat processors.

But even with carabaos, he says, much as the meat processors would want to source manufacturing grade meat from them, the live animal population is hardly enough for their enterprise and their market. "If we allow the Philippine Carabao Center to keep increasing production, then maybe the old farm animals can be slaughtered for either the fresh meat market or for the processors while the new animals raised by PCC will serve as work animals," he says.

At one point, during the term of the then DA Secretary Edgardo Angara (now senator), the livestock people were forced to play along with the government against Australia when the government went into a trade war with this country because of the tropical fruit issue.

"We were asked to source our meat requirement from Europe. But when we turned to Europe, it was in the thick of the mad cow disease and later the FMD epidemic. We did not know what to do," Buencamino laments voicing his group’s hopes that this issue will not be used again in the current tropical fruit trade war with Australia.

An example of how over regulation of government has been adversely affecting the livestock sector is the recently-issued Administrative Order No. 5 (series 2002) by the Department of Agriculture-Bureau of Animal Industry, whose implementation was suspended because of representations made by PAMPI.

AO5 was intended to control the transport of live animals and meat products from Luzon to the Visayas and Mindanao, which have been declared FMD-free. Because of this restriction, many consumers in the south could no longer buy their favorite processed meat products. Even fastfood chains, Jollibee and McDonald’s, could not send their patties and other meat products to their franchises in the south, Buencamino explains.

Administrative order AO25, on the other hand, was meant to require importation of all meat products to be issued a certificate of inspection by an independent international inspection agency, to be accredited by the National Meat Inspection Commission, to ensure their safety.

This particular AO has been shelved pending further consultation with meat exporters — with the US being the most vocal opposition of this order — and reviews as to their consistency with existing global agreements such as with the World Trade Organization.

Again prompted by local hog raisers, this AO is now pending approval at the desk of DA Secretary Leonardo Q. Montemayor after having been reviewed by the Policy and Planning Office of DA.