Agriculture.ph Blog

LOCAL swine producers are feeling the crunch of the swine flu scare with dipping domestic pork demand, but expressed optimism on market improvement soon, an industry leader said.

This developed as Emilio V. Escobillo Jr., president of the South Cotabato Swine Producers Association (Socospa), also appeared upbeat as government animal experts are addressing concerns on another hog disease — the ebola reston virus — that obstructed the country’s pilot foreign pork shipment last December.

“There’s initial drop [on domestic pork meat demand] due to misconception,” Escobillo confirmed when sought about the effects of swine flu that killed people in Mexico, the United States and in other countries.

“The swine flu could not be transmitted [to humans] through eating of pork meat,” he added.

Cathy M. Romero, sales and marketing officer of Matutum Meat Packing Corp., said demand for pork meat also plunged but declined to attribute it to the swine flu scare.

Matutum Meat operates a P200 million modern swine slaughtering facility in neighboring Polomolok, South Cotabato. It distributes fresh and frozen cut pork meat products to the domestic market.

“Normally this season is lean in as far as pork meat consumption is concerned,” Romero said in a separate interview.

Both Romero and Escobillo did not say how much were the decline in pork meat volume from their buyers.

Matutum Meat, a sister company of Cebu-based Sunpride Foods Inc. which produces Holiday and Sunpride canned goods, is the only processing plant in the country accredited by Singapore to export pork meat products in the island-state.

Last December, cut pork meat products were to be transported to the Singapore when the Department of Agriculture (DA) stopped it due to the discovery of a strain of ebola virus in pig tissue samples coming from four swine farms in the provinces of Bulacan, Pangasinan and Nueva Ecija.

Escobillo said the Bureau of Animal Industry, an attached agency of the Department of Agriculture, is testing hog farms in Mindanao for possible clearance from ebola reston to push forward the country’s foreign foray.

“The BAI promised to finish the ebola testing in three months,” he said.

The ebola reston virus, a subtype of Ebola, was discovered in the Philippines in 1989 among crab-eating macaques exported to the Hazleton Laboratories in Reston, Virginia. (BSS)

Source: Sun Star