Farmers need access to cold storage

MANILA, Philippines — The Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) is urging cold chain industry players to make their facilities more accessible to farmers to help spur the agriculture sector.

In an online forum by the Cold Chain Association of the Philippines (CCAP), BAI director Reildrin Morales said changes are expected to be seen in the hog-raising industry as it recovers and evolves.

He emphasized the need to step up biosecurity measures to ensure that hogs will not contract diseases such as the African Swine Fever (ASF).

“With the repopulation program, we’re trying to look at clustering the farmers. If you are 60 farmers, like a cooperative, put up a biosecure farm to be co-owned by all farmers so that the threat of disease will be minimized,” he said.

Morales said the allied industries, such as cold chain facilities, need to keep pace with the development of the industry and be competitive.

“With that I mean accessibility,” he said.

Morales said cold chain facilities may also do clustering for small farmers that need to store their products.

“With the ASF and the potential addition of imported products, we will have to level up the availability of cold storage warehouses for imported and local meat production,” Morales said.

He said it is not only imported meat that is stored in cold storage facilities, but local produce as well.

Morales shared that as of Feb. 15, a total of 23,094.71 metric tons of frozen pork are stored in accredited cold storage facilities in the country. This is 43 percent lower than the year before.

Of the current inventory, 19,805.79 MT are imported while 3,288.92 MT are local.

According to Morales, more pork imports are expected to arrive in the country by next month or at the end of this month based on the sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) permits issued.