Pork imports will placate only Metro Manilans, but ruin others

Officials intend to flood Metro Manila with imported pork for a year. Such populism will please consumers in the capital short term. But in the long run it can kill the country’s P200-billion a year hog industry. Millions of families will be driven out of the business. That would be most tragic during the prolonged pandemic. They will go hungry.

Digest the data. The Philippines is the world’s tenth largest consumer, eighth largest producer and seventh largest importer of pork. There were 12.71 million hogs at the start of 2019, 0.83 percent more than the 12.6 million in 2018. Two in three of the raisers are small-scale, in backyard pens of less than 100 pigs. With the commercial growers they make up nearly a fifth, 18.28 percent, of agricultural output, next only to rice.

African swine fever (ASF) began decimating Luzon’s hog population in mid-2019. Government indemnified the smallest growers P5,000 per pig, but no more than ten, to surrender and bury diseased stocks. Left to fend for themselves, other backyard raisers hid the contagions. Thus the epidemic remained uncontained in 2020.

Relations strained between agriculture officials and raisers. Consultations apparently became few and far between. Today the Department of Agriculture says that 400,000 ASF-infected stocks have been culled; industry leaders insist it’s ten times more.

Another thorny issue was unabated pork and chicken smuggling, abetted by certain DA bureaucrats, growers allege.

Three successive typhoons in late 2020 further ravaged the hog and poultry industries. Fuel prices also rose. Pork retail rates in Metro Manila public markets soared to P400 a kilo. As consumers switched, chicken became costlier too.

Two obvious solutions were suggested. First, transport hogs to Metro Manila from cheaper sources in Mindanao, the Visayas and un-ravaged areas in Luzon. It had been tried and tested at the onset of ASF. Also, wait for another consumer shift – to fish. For protein Filipinos depend more on fish, two-thirds of our food, than on meat. In 2017 we each ate on average 8.9 kilos of pork (15.88 percent of our diet); 9.32 kilos of chicken (16.63 percent); beef 1.04 kilos (1.86 percent) and fish, 36.8 kilos (65.64 percent).

Galunggong (round scad), bangus (milkfish) and tilapia were aplenty: 202,656 metric tons, 422,789 MT and 304,421 MT, respectively, in 2020. Total commercial capture, municipal fisheries and aquaculture output that year was 4,403,709 MT. Metro Manila was the prime market. Pork price spikes eventually would subside.

The country is to import 54,000 MT of pork this year at preferential 30 percent tariff. Hog raisers proposed a third solution to the supply-price problem: Quadruple the import this year to 200,000 MT, but at 40 percent tariff for the increment. Then use the additional government revenue to wipe out ASF. How? Double the indemnity to P10,000 per surrendered infected pig. At that rate, hog raisers would be encouraged to restock.

The DA would hear none of those. Instead it got Malacañang to impose a two-month price freeze on pork and chicken. At the same time it promised to move tens of thousand of hogs per day to the capital but was able to bring in only a fraction, one-eleventh. Pork became scarce. Unable to sell at the prescribed rate, pork wholesalers and retailers went on holiday. Consumers shifted to the only available option: fish.

Now the DA is to enforce another scheme. Instead of only 200,000 MT this year as suggested by hog raisers, it would allow the import of 400,000 MT. It will also slash tariffs. Preferential tariff for the first 54,000 MT will be cut from 30 percent to only five in the first six months, then onto ten percent. For the additional 350,000 MT, tariff will go down from 40 percent to only 15 in the first six months then onto 20 percent. Imported frozen pork may even be sold in public markets unsafely without refrigeration.

Hog raisers will have no fighting chance. The imports can find their way to outside Metro Manila and undercut domestic producers nationwide.

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“Turn away from mortals, who have only breath in their nostrils, for of what account are they?” Isaiah 2:22

God will humble the arrogant. The powerful but ungodly will be brought to ruin. Trust not in human power; it can evaporate like dew in the morning sunshine. Death limits human power. When the breath of a tyrant is gone, so is his power.

Once the life of an evil person is over, all that is left is the evil. Focus our trust on God. Anything else is a dim, small and distorted reflection. (Shared by a prayerful retired general.)

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“Gotcha: An Exposé on the Philippine Government” is available as e-book and paperback. Get a free copy of “Chapter 1: Beijing’s Bullying and Duplicity”. Simply subscribe to my newsletter at: https://jariusbondoc.com/#subscribe. Book orders also accepted there.