San Miguel Foods resumes chicken exports to Japan

San Miguel Foods Inc. (SMFI) has resumed exporting chicken to Japan.

SMFI has in recent weeks shipped an initial 10 metric tons (MT), barely two months after Japan lifted the ban on chicken imports from the Philippines.

"The poultry sector is back on track with its plan to supply the Japanese market, some of the companies that were earlier preparing to tap the market prior to the ban, are now firming up their plans," said Ruben Pascual, chairman of the Poultry Export Board and spokesperson of the Philippine Association of Broiler Integrators (PABI).

For one, SMFI is targeting to ship out a total of 1,000 MT of chicken to Japan for the rest of the year.

Pascual said the other companies intending to export such as Swift Foods Inc. and Tyson AgroVentures are now in talks with trading houses in Japan that have previously wanted to get their chicken supply from the Philippines.

Agriculture Secretary Domingo Panganiban said the re-opening of the lucrative Japanese market for processed chicken should be a big boost to local exporters.

The ban was lifted after almost a year of negotiating between the Department of Agriculture and Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Fishery and Forest (MAFF). MAFF had required the Bureau of Animal Industry very detailed information stating the country’s preparedness program to combat the dreaded avian influenza disease that is sweeping various poultry farms across the globe and in some countries, infecting humans.

Japan took its time in reviewing documents submitted by the BAI, indicating its reluctance to reopen its market for processed chicken which was interrupted last year because of a suspected incidence of a bird flu virus in a small poultry farm in Calumpit, Bulacan.

The Philippines which voluntarily halted exports of chicken to Japan after the Calumpit incident, was subsequently declared as bird-flu free by the Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL), the regional reference laboratory for AI (avian influenza) of the Paris-based Office International des Epizooties or OIE which is a unit under the World Health Organization (WHO) for Animal Health and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The lifting of the ban on chicken exports from the Philippines also revived hopes of local poultry processors to finally become a significant player in the profitable Japanese market.

Before Thailand’s poultry farms were devastated by the H5N1 bird-flu strain, it supplied 60 percent of the "yakitori" chicken market in Japan. Brazil has replaced Thailand in this particular market.

The Philippines is one of few remaining countries that has remained free of the bird flu disease.