Importation of carrots from China bucked

Highland farmers and scientists are urging the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) to reject the proposal to import carrots from China and to nullify the initial results of the pest risk analysis (PRA) of fresh carrots from China.

In the third public consultation held at the BPI compound in Manila, yesterday, farmers from the Cordillera Region, Benguet and Mt. Province, non-government organizations and plant experts from the Benguet State University questioned the validity of the PRA conducted by the bureau.

"Based on our analysis of the results of the PRA, we found a lot of gray areas and gaps that need to be filled, Thus, it is our recommendation that the Philippine government should not import carrots from China. Instead, a new PRA should be conducted that will involve the stakeholders and the cost of which will be borne by an independent body," said Jocelyn C. Perez, professor and former director of the Northern Philippines Root Crop Research and Training Center of the Benguet State University (BSU).

"There is a problem when it is the exporter (China) that sponsored the trip of the PRA team that was supposed to have conducted an ocular inspection of all the production and postharvest processing facilities. There is nowhere in the report that is clear that aside from the inspection of the washroom and storage facilities, an ocular inspectiion was conducted in the areas where carrots are supposed to be coming from, particularly in Shengdong and Fujen," added Ernesto Ordoñez, chairman of the agriculture watchdog group Alyansa Agrikultura.

Perez said the BSU review team found out that there are 12 quarantine pests in China, and majority of them are not reported in the Philippines.

"That’s the folly of the lack of actual field observations. There may be more pests that were not recorded, most of the list came from literatures downloaded on the internet," said Perez.

The BPI PRA team noted in its report that two of the 12 pests, "agrobacterium rhizogenes and xanthomonas hortorum pv. carotae present a high risk of being introduced in the agroecosystem." — Rocel Felix

Ordonez said the BPI should nullify the questionable PRA results altogether and conduct a new PRA on fresh carrots from China. — Rocel Felix