Philippines eyes pork exports to China

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines is looking at exporting pork to China amid the outbreak of African swine fever (ASF) in the neighboring country.

Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol recently met with Chinese Consul General Li Lin to discuss the possibility of exporting pork to help ease the glut in China’s pork supply.

“We are seriously looking at exporting pork to China because of what is going on with the hog industry. This will serve as a breather for our local hog producers and help stabilize prices,” Piñol said in a briefing yesterday.

“This will be a good development for us because of the high local production of pork, the farmers are already complaining of low farm gate price,” he added.

Thai-owned Charoen Pokphand Foods Public Co. Ltd., which has operations in the Philippines, is already in the process of finalizing documents for the initial exports of their pork products to China and Japan.

“They are very positive. They just have to comply with the SPS (sanitary and phytosanitary) requirements of China,” Piñol said.

“They have a huge shortfall, around 20 million because they are also killing the sows and it will take years before they recover,” he said.

Piñol said it would be easier for the Philippines to enter the Chinese market given the situation. He also assured that the move would  not result in shortage in local supply.

“I don’t think there will be a shortage. I think the farmers will always react positively if there is a greater demand. The moment farmers feel there is a market for their produce, they will produce more,” he said.

The agri chief is travelling to China on May 16 to follow up on the issue.

The local industry is choking up with excessive supply.  Available data showed that inventory in the cold storages have reached 34.3 million kilograms of pork, already good for about three months.

The current inventory is too much for the market to absorb which, in turn, is affecting the drop in prices of local pork and even chicken produce.

The local production of chicken and hogs posted significant increments in 2018, proving that there is enough supply of the commodities.

Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority showed that chicken production increased five percent to 1.84 million metric tons (MT) last year, while swine population improved one percent to 12.71 million heads.

However, total volume of pork imports rose 14 percent to 312,499 MT.