RP faces loss of Japanese market for papaya, mango

The Philippines faces the risk of permanently losing the multi-million-dollar Japanese market following the recent ban on the entry of Dole Tropifresh Philippines solo papaya and mango to Japan.

Agricultural Attaché to Japan Joseph Sison said the Japan Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) imposed the ban starting Oct. 22 after it discovered that portions of a shipment of 35,150 kilos of solo papayas by Dole Tropifresh Philippines were infested with fruit flies. The shipment was seized at the Kawasaki Port.

While the shipment was seized, another shipment from Dole Tropifresh Davao was undergoing inspection at Kobe Part and initial findings show the same level of infestation as in the Kawasaki shipment.

As a result, the MAFF banned the entry of the fruits and questioned the effectivity of vapor heat treatment (VHT) as a means to eliminate fruit fly infestation.

Sison said the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) were asked by the MAFF to submit an incident report on the matter. The MAFF also requested a detailed summary on the measures and procedures the DA/BPI intends to institute at the Davao VHT plant to ensure that such insect infestation does not occur in the future.

In the meantime, the import ban will remain until such time as the MAFF sees it fit to allow fruits from Davao.

Sison warned that doubts on the effectiveness of the VHT could pose troubles for the Philippines, especially in its bid to penetrate other markets such as Europe, US and Australia. VHT has long been used by fruit exporters as means to fumigate and weed out fruit flies.

Australia, for one, is proposing another method to fumigate Philippine pineapples and bananas before these are allowed entry in their domestic market.

In recent months, the Japanese ruling coalition passed into law a proposal amending Japan’s Food Sanitation Law. The law calls for a total country ban on shipments found to exceed the acceptable levels of pesticide residue.

The approval of the proposed amendment gives Japanese government inspectors the authority to ban imports of a specific commodity from a specific country totally if even just a single shipment of that product is found to contain excessive pesticide chemical residues.