Recall of PAP importation order sought

MANILA, Philippines — Agriculture industry leaders and animal health experts are urging the government to recall the order, which allows the importation of processed animal protein (PAP) from African swine fever (ASF) affected countries, as this will expose the still recovering local hog industry to the deadly disease.

In a meeting yesterday, the National Advisory Committee for Animal Disease Control and Emergency (NAC-ADCE) reiterated their call for the Department of Agriculture (DA) to recall Memorandum Order 59 that allowed the importation of PAP from ASF affected countries.

This comes a week after local agriculture groups, NAC-ADCE and other allied sectors in the veterinary and animal health sectors submitted to President Marcos their unanimous opposition to the memo.

The NAC-ADCE issued a resolution urging President Marcos to put on hold the said memo signed by suspended DA Undersecretary Leocadio Sebastian.

As a technical advisory body, the committee has recommended to the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) to first conduct a risk assessment on the importation of PAP.

The bureau is also being urged to conduct a value chain study of the possible PAP routes and identify the critical points in the chain to determine the movement management capacities.

The NAC-ADCE also wants the BAI to investigate the biosecurity practices in aquaculture and verify the economics of importing PAP from ASF free countries that may incur a higher cost versus the cost of incurring and controlling ASF.

Findings of all these undertakings should be subjected to a public consultation, to which the NAC-ADCE said it would be able to evaluate and then recommend a course of action.

“We are requesting BAI to put on hold the memo. We are asking the BAI to not issue sanitary phytosanitary (SPS) import clearance and to study,” National Federation of Hog Farmers Inc. president Chester Tan said in a phone interview.

The NAC-ADCE resolution was submitted to the President, along with the joint position paper of the Samahang Industriya ng Agrikultura (SINAG) and the whole livestock industry rejecting the importation of PAP from ASF countries and the statement of veterinarians and animal nutritionists against the entry of PAP from ASF infected countries.

In a statement, SINAG executive director Jayson Cainglet said the controversial memo was signed without any consultation with all stakeholders.

“Similar to the sugar importation fiasco, there was deliberate misinformation on the basis of the memo and without consideration of the impact of such imports to the livestock industry,” he said.

In a text message, Pork Producers Federation of the Philippines president Rolando Tambago said their group strongly opposes the importation of PAP from ASF infected countries as this would put at risk the local swine industry.

“Be reminded that the hog industry is still suffering from uncontrolled spread of ASF virus in some regions, so bringing in more possible contaminants will definitely affect the local swine industry,” he said.

“Those who really wanted to use PAP for the aqua sector can source the material from countries with no cases of ASF and we don’t oppose that,” Tambago said.

Tan said the hog industry is not against the entry of imported PAP, but it should only come from the six countries without ASF.

These countries include the US, Canada, France, Belgium, Netherlands and Ireland.

The aquaculture sector earlier said it was waiting for the full implementation of a memorandum circular issued recently by the BAI to address the concern of non-availability of quality feeds.

The said memo was supported by the National Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Management Council (NFARMC) and endorsed by the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) regional directors.

According to fish farm groups, the productivity of fish farms throughout the country continues to decline due to lack of quality feeds and sufficient fingerlings.