PH urged to allow entry of more Brazilian meat

São Paulo, Brazil—Meat exporters in Brazil are urging the government to approve additional foreign meat establishments (FMEs) that would enable them to deliver more agricultural produce to the Philippines.

“We are asking [the] Philippine government to allow more establishments for Brazilian establishments to export pork meat and chicken meat to [the] Philippines,” Luis Rua, markets director of Brazilian Association of Animal Protein (ABPA), said at a press conference.

Rua said Brazil has “very limited quantities” of FMEs which, in turn, might constrain them from meeting chicken and pork requirements of the Philippines amid the exporters’ readiness to meet the increasing demand.

“Even Brazil today cannot send more to Philippines because you have [a] limited quantity of establishments that are allowing to export to Philippines,” he said.

As defined by the Meat Inspection Code of the Philippines, a meat establishment refers to premises including slaughterhouses, poultry dressing plants, meat processing plants, cold storage facilities, warehouses and other meat outlets.

Food animals or meat products are slaughtered, prepared, processed, handled, packed or stored in these establishments, which are approved and registered by the National Meat Inspection Service (NMIS).

Negotiations ongoing

Negotiations between the two governments on FMEs are ongoing.

“We are asking the Brazilian government to negotiate with [the] Philippines to set a broader list or approve the system [for quarantine and meat inspection],” Rua told Filipino reporters on the sidelines of SIAVS 2022, the biggest poultry and pork event in Brazil.

Based on the NMIS list, 54 Brazilian meat establishments are authorized to export different meat products to Manila. All FMEs in Brazil are accredited individually and the Philippines then inspects such establishments to check if they have complied with the requirements to export meat and meat products.

“We are confident because we have proven to the Philippines that we can be a partner in exporting products that can add value there. At this moment, with the ASF (African swine fever) there, Brazil increased the volumes to the Philippines helping your country to keep the supply [stable] and also the price [lower],” Rua added.

Brazil already surpassed last year’s volume for pork exports which stood at 41,863 metric tons in the first semester of 2022, up by 277.7 percent from 11,083 MT, data from the ABPA showed. The 2021 volume was at 33,475 MT.

Manila imported 116,804 MT of chicken meat from the South American country, an increase of 43.7 percent from 81,259 MT during the comparative period.

Worldwide, the Philippines is the seventh biggest export destination of Brazil’s chicken meat and eighth largest market for pork, the same ABPA report noted.

“Among those 15 main countries for our exports, the Philippines is the country that is increasing the most,” Rua said.

In the Philippines, Brazil is the leading source of chicken abroad and the third largest supplier of pork, based on the latest importation report from the Bureau of Animal Industry.

Rua said consumers will ultimately benefit from reduced tariffs on certain agricultural goods should the government decide to make it permanent. Otherwise, the imposition of higher rates will hurt the public through higher prices of food products.

“If you lower the tariff of course you will [have a] lower price at the end for the population,” said the ABPA official.

“[In] the end, the final consumer will be the one who will gain from this measure because if not, we are putting some tariffs that probably would be the cost for importers to be higher,” he said.

One of the last issuances of former President Rodrigo Duterte was Executive Order No. 171 which extended the most favored nation tariff rates for pork imports at 15 percent for in-quota volume and 25 percent for out-quota volume until end-December.