Poultry growers belonging to the United Broiler Raisers Association (Ubra) are asking the Philippine government to put in place a “blanket ban” on frozen chicken from the United States.
Ubra Chairman Gregorio F. San Diego Jr. said his group relayed this request to the Department of Agriculture (DA) on Thursday.
“We met with [Agriculture Undersecretary Jose] Reaño and we asked the DA if it’s possible to temporarily stop the importation of chicken from the entire US and not just from select areas to ensure that the Philippines would remain free from avian influenza,” San Diego said in a telephone interview.
The DA has earlier banned the purchase of chicken from a number of US states, including Iowa, Washington, California, Minnesota and Nebraska where there have been outbreaks of bird flu.
“Bird-flu outbreaks have already been reported in 15 US states and there are reports that this number would go up,” San Diego said.
“The problem is that it would be difficult to trace the origin of the frozen chicken. So as a precautionary measure, we believe it would be better to put in place a blanket ban,” he said in the vernacular.
San Diego said the government must do everything possible to ensure that the Philippines would remain bird flu-free. “We banned all poultry products from China when there were outbreaks of avian flu in some areas there. We should impose the same ban on American poultry products,” he said.
San Diego said the Philippines does not need additional chicken imports as the country’s frozen chicken inventory as of June 30 has already reached 24 million kilograms.
He also allayed fears that there would be a shortage in locally produced chicken despite the possibility that poultry growers would lose one possible source of breeder stocks. San Diego noted that Cobb broilers being bred by many local-poultry growers are sourced from the US.
In a statement released on Thursday, the DA said the Philippines’s status as a country free from foot-and-mouth disease, avian flu and peste des petits ruminants or “goat plague” gives the local poultry and livestock industries an edge in the international meat and meat products’ market.
Earlier Ubra said the country is expected to produce 1 billion broilers this year, as commercial growers are projected to increase their output.
The group said the projected broiler production this year is 11 percent higher than the estimated 900 million birds produced by the local poultry industry in 2014.