DA toughens rules on meat imports

Meat and meat product imports may have to pass through the proverbial eye of the needle before they are allowed to come in after the Department of Agriculture issued an order providing for stricter quarantine rules for these products as well as other agricultural products.

Agriculture Assistant Secretary Ma. Celia Fernandez told The STAR that under the new administrative order, importers will have to secure prior import permits as well as other requirements such as veterinary quarantine clearances (VQCs) before bringing in the imported products into the country.

Fernandez said that at present, many importers take for granted the import requirements and secure these only when the imported items are already in the ports. "They assume that the VQCs and imports permits will be issued anyway," she said.

But even before the new administrative order takes effect, many importers have already complained that they could not release their imports from the piers because they did not have the VQCs. Issuance of import permits and other import requirements is now the function of the office of the agriculture secretary.

"Licensing is a prerequisite to importation to our country. VQCs and import permits have to be secured even before the export from another country begins," she added.

The new tighter quarantine rules were an offshoot of the problem encountered by poultry raisers over the surge in imports of cheap imported chicken meat, many of which are of dubious origin.

But according to Fernandez, the DA cannot issue rules specifically for just one type of product and decided instead to expand it to include other meat and meat products.

She said the new AO addresses the problem of chicken meat labelled as coming from the United States and intended for export to Russia and Kosovo but are diverted to the Philippines.

The Philippine Association of Broiler Integrators (PABI) suspects that these chicken meat are rejects by Russia and other countries.

"If the chicken meat is not labelled as intended for the Philippine market, we are not going to issue import clearances. This is consistent with provisions of our Consumer Act," Fernandez told The STAR.