‘Phl can be major supplier of Peking ducks’

MANILA, Philippines - A local fowl breeding and raising expert wants the Philippines to take advantage of its bird flu virus-free status and make a bid to be a major supplier of Peking ducks to the world market.

Eulalio Lorenzo, popularly known as Doc Ayong in the game fowl breeding and cockfighting world, said his ongoing effort to develop local expertise in the large-scale breeding and raising of Peking ducks could better defend the Philippines against the entry of the bird flu virus.

Lorenzo, a member of the board of directors of the Filipino Investors Society Producers Cooperative (FISPC), said a big danger to the country’s bird flu-free status is the smuggling in of Peking ducks from China, which he said was positive for the bird flu virus.

“Right now, there is smuggling of Pe- king ducks into the country from bird flu infected countries because there is a ban in the importation of Peking ducks from these countries,” Lorenzo said.

“China is one of the main suppliers of Peking ducks – frozen and live – but because they are positive of bird flu, our government is not allowing the importation of Peking duck from China,” said Lorenzo, a licensed veterinarian. “The main source of frozen Peking duck

for so many years is mainland China. When there was a reported confirmed case of bird flu there, our government prohibited their importation,” he said.

While the ban was imposed, Chinese restaurants continued to look for Peking ducks to serve in their restaurants.

“If the smuggling can’t be controlled, we might have a bird flu case here in the country, and that will kill our poultry industry,” Lorenzo said.

Lorenzo estimates the Philippine poultry industry earns billions of pesos and em- ploys millions of poultry raisers and hands.

“Right now, we are an exporter of broilers because our broilers are accepted in countries such as Japan, Korea and Singapore because we don’t have bird flu,” Lorenzo pointed out.

“We’re one of only two countries in ASEAN that doesn’t have bird flu. The other one is Singapore (but it) could not raise poultry in a big way like us,” Lorenzo said.

For his effort to build a capability for a large-scale breeding and raising of Peking ducks, Lorenzo said he had resorted to importing from the Czech Republic.

“My Peking ducks are from Czechoslovakia. As I said, China is positive for bird flu so I can’t bring in ducks from China. So I imported from Czechoslovakia,” he said

Lorenzo said he started the effort in 2012 with an initial 500 parent stock of Peking ducks from the Czech Republic.

“They had chicks, and then we raised them, and then we brought in some more. There was a time when we reached as many as 15,000 heads. Now I have 7,000 here (in his Capas, Tarlac farm resort),” Lorenzo said.

Lorenzo said that building a local Peking duck industry could also be financially rewarding, especially if the volume can enable local raisers to get into Peking duck raising to export to neighboring countries in ASEAN and Asia.

“Actually, I have an order from Japan for 100,000 (heads) a month. The problem is the quality and the volume,” he said. “It’s not that easy to establish an operation that can assure sup- ply in such high volumes. We can already raise thousands of heads right now. But we still have to do a lot of things. We have to establish first a lot of things like proper nutrition, management, housing. A big challenge is establishing proper dressing, that is the removal of the feathers, it is hard to remove the feathers of Peking ducks,” Lorenzo said. Aside from Japan, Lorenzo

said another possible big market for Philippine-bred and raised Peking ducks is Korea. Even Taiwan, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and other ASEAN countries are possible markets, he said.

“They (ASEAN and Asian neighbors) are big eaters of Peking duck,” Lorenzo said.

“We also have a substantial requirement for Peking ducks from among our local Chinese restaurants,” he said.