Safe meat for Christmas

As Christmas grows near, food should become not only plentiful, but also safe. Last Nov. 12, Senate Agriculture Committee chair Cynthia Villar conducted a hearing on “the importation, inspection, distribution, and sale of frozen meat to ensure food security, sufficiency and safety”.

During this hearing, the Alyansa Agrikultura and Sinag argued for stricter meat controls to benefit both consumer safety and farmer livelihood.

Quarantine control

For the first six months of 2014, the Bureau of Customs (BOC) showed pork importation of 122 million kilos.

However, only 116 million kilos underwent the Department of Agriculture’s (DA) quarantine inspection. This means as much as 6 million kilos carried health risks.

One mechanism that the Alyansa Agrikultura has been recommending since 2006 to combat smuggling is the inward foreign manifest (IFM). This document lists the imported products for each shipment at least one day before its arrival. However, the BOC kept this list to itself and did not share it with either the DA and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).

Thus, the DA and the DTI could not put suspected smuggled goods on its watchlist before their arrival. When the DA and DTI got the IFM from BOC in 2005, the smuggling rate decreased by 25 percent. But when this access was removed, the smuggling rate increased from 6 percent in 2005 to 33 percent in 2012.

Customs Commissioner John Sevilla has started to reverse this trend. Last July, he gave IFM access to DA and DTI. In the case of imported pork, the DA will now have this control mechanism so that they will be able to inspect all pork shipments before their release. We must help ensure that DA makes good use of this IFM information on a daily basis, or else the IFM will be of little benefit.

Regulation

There is a more significant problem. Imported meat enters mostly in frozen form. In her Senate Resolution 975, Villar stated: “There is rampant and open sale of frozen meat in public markets in our country, which is not stored in freezers, or cold storage containers, but are left exposed to the natural elements.”

On Jan. 12, 2012, Agriculture Secretary Alcala promulgated through Department Administrative Order (DAO) 6-2012 the rules and regulations on hygienic handling of chilled, frozen and thawed meat in wet markets.

He identified the problem thus: “Frozen meat previously destined for supermarkets, hotels and restaurants where refrigeration facilities exists, ended up in large quantities in wet markets where there are no similar facilities and where meat vendors have no experience in handling frozen meats, thus creating food safety risks due to product thawing an mishandling.”

At the Senate hearing, we learned that DA had done much good work in confiscating dead meat, but not frozen meat sold in wet markets with no refrigeration facilities.

It was said that the responsibility for confiscating dead meat was primarily with the local government units (LGUs). But what DA does with dead meat, it should also do with illegally placed frozen meat. Both dead and frozen meat in these wet markets constitute danger to consumer health.

Upon a closer reading of DAO 6-2012, we found out that the market administrator of the wet market is equally responsible and liable for the implementation of this regulation. He can therefore be a valuable asset in this effort.

Joint action

We recommend that the DA now launch a vigorous campaign to help ensure safe meat for Christmas. The argument that LGUs are primarily responsible for implementing this regulation should not stop DA from exercising its own unique role.

In addition, the DA should encourage the LGU to reward the conscientious market administrators and penalize the irresponsible ones. Consumers can likewise help by not buying frozen meat in markets with no refrigeration facilities. This is not only for their own good health, but also to prevent unscrupulous meat traders from making money at the expense of consumer health.

Senator Villar called the hearing because of the alarming increase in frozen meat sold in wet markets with no refrigeration facilities. Most of this frozen meat is imported and therefore decreases the income of our domestic producers who sell mostly fresh meat.

United action by the affected stakeholders will result not only in safe meat for Christmas, but also a better livelihood for our domestic farmers.

(The author is chair of Agriwatch, former Secretary for Presidential Flagship Programs and Projects, and former Undersecretary for Agriculture, Trade and Industry. For inquiries and suggestions, e-mail [email protected] or telefax (02) 8522112).