LOCAL hog raisers belonging to the Pork Producers Federation of the Philippines Inc. (ProPork) threw their support behind the Department of Agriculture’s decision to allow importation of 7 million kilograms of pork meat to arrest the increasing price in the local market.
“We support the recent pronouncement of Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol. It is his job to maintain food security and the prices,” ProPork President Edwin Chen told the BusinessMirror on Thursday.
However, Chen defended his group saying no member of ProPork defied their commitment to Piñol to maintain their farm-gate prices amid the spiking price of pork meat in the retail level.
“It’s not true that we increased our prices. There are a lot of hog producers in the country and not all of them are members of ProPork,” Chen said.
“But definitely, those hog raisers who increased their prices were not from our group. You can see, we haven’t increased our prices,” Chen added.
Chen said even before Piñol called the local hog-industry stakeholders for a meeting regarding the spiking price of pork, their group has already maintained their prices.
“When I learned Secretary Piñol met local hog raisers in Davao and when I got the feedback he is asking our support to not increase the price, right that day, I issued an announcement to our members not to increase our prices,” he said.
“And we haven’t increased our prices since then,” he added.
The ProPork chief said they will remain true to their commitment to not increase their farm-gate prices amid recent developments.
“Our members agreed to maintain their farm-gate prices because I told them the secretary is asking our help,” Chen said.
On a Facebook post on Wednesday, Piñol said he has allowed the importation of 7 million kilograms (kg) of pork meat, or 7,000 metric tons (MT)—within the in-quota rate—to stabilize the increasing price of the commodity in the local market.
Pork imported within the minimum access volume (MAV) is slapped a 30-percent tariff, while those outside of MAV are leveed a 40-percent tariff.
Piñol said the “insincerity” of some local hog raisers to help the government control the spike of price of pork meat in the market prompted him to call a technical team to assess the situation.
“I appealed to the hog raisers that while the opportunity to make bigger profit is tempting, they should control the price of live weight so as not to further push up the price of pork. In the meeting, they all pledged to help,” Piñol said. “In spite of that, the prices of pork continued to rise, prompting me to call the technical team to assess the situation”.
The Department of Agriculture (DA) chief said right after the meeting of the DA technical team, he notified the local hog industry that he had allowed the importation.
“I have approved the recommendation of the technical team in view of the seeming insincerity of the hog raisers I talked with last week,” Piñol said.
“If you remember, I made an appeal that the price of live weight be controlled, so that I will not be unduly pressured by the consumers. It seems my appeal fell on deaf ears; hence, I made this move to allow importation,” Piñol added.
Piñol also said he already informed Executive Secretary Salvador C. Medialdea about the decision of the DA to allow the importation of 7,000 MT of pork meat.