Pangasinan’s carabeef business flourishes

The carabeef tapa (dried carabao meat) industry in Mangaldan town has flourished despite restrictions on the slaughter of carabaos in Pangasinan.

Recently, town officials and meat industry leaders gathered in Mangaldan for the whole-day 4th Pindang Festival, a feature of the town fiesta.

Pindang is the local word for tapa (a butchered animal’s flank). Because of its popularity, pindang remains one of the town’s major earners, said Milagros Padilla, municipal planning and development officer.

“We now have more than 100 meat product entrepreneurs and they are also providing employment to our town mates,” said Padilla.

In 2013, Gov. Amado Espino Jr. implemented a provincial ordinance that regulated the sale or slaughter of female carabao. Under the law, a female carabao can only be sold and slaughtered if it is at least nine years old or when it has given birth for several times and can no longer breed.

The ordinance also established a buy-back plan, allowing the provincial government to buy breedable female carabao to be distributed as additional stocks to local dairy cooperatives. About P1.5 million was initially allocated for the scheme, and P500,000 in the succeeding years.

Veronica Junatas, slaughterhouse master, said carabao traders had been following the ordinance. “What we have slaughtered here are those that are already old and no longer capable of breeding,” she said.

Thirty carabao are slaughtered in Mangaldan every day, or as many as 11,000 carabao killed in a year, Junatas said.

Marlon Tibig, a meat seller from Barangay Guilig in Mangaldan, said only 15 to 20 kilograms (kg) of meat from every slaughtered carabao were being made into pindang.

“We choose the soft parts, like the tenderloin and the sirloin. This is why the quality of tapa in Mangaldan is high. We remove all the veins for the meat to make it even more tender,” Tibig said.

Profitable business

Pindang are then placed in 400-gram packs and sold for P110 per pack. “It’s a profitable business. We normally get orders from Metro Manila and from those who have relatives abroad,” Tibig said.

In 2013, the carabeef industry was boosted when the Association of Meat Entrepreneurs of Mangaldan was given P1.2 million worth of equipment by the Department of Trade and Industry.

The group’s new meat grinder, slicer, mixer, tumbler, a vacuum packing machine and a digital weighing scale with a 100-kilogram capacity triggered an increase in the number of carabao being slaughtered in the province in the last two years.

According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, the number of carabao in the province grew from 10,833 in 2013 to 12,875 in 2015.

Two years ago, PCC director Gloria de la Cruz warned that carabao would disappear in Pangasinan in the next 10 years if their indiscriminate slaughter for meat and meat products was not stopped.

“I think our joint campaign with the Philippine Carabao Center (PCC) to save our carabao worked,” said Eric Jose Perez, provincial veterinarian.