Singapore eyes talks with Manila for pork imports

Singapore wants to resume talks for pork imports from Manila, which voluntarily suspended what was supposed to be its first pork export due to the Ebola Reston virus in 2008, the National Federation of Hog Farmers, Inc. (NFHFI) said at the weekend. "Singapore wrote a letter to the BAI (Bureau of Animal Industry) saying that they wanted to renegotiate the importation of pork products," federation President Albert Lim, Jr. said on Sunday. Lim said Singapore had sent a team of phytosanitary experts in March to inspect hog facilities in Mindanao and negotiate with Manila for the imports. In December 2008, the Agriculture Department canceled the shipment by South Cotabato-based Matutum Meat Packing Corp. of two 40-foot vans containing 50,000 metric tons (MT) of pork bound for Singapore due to an ebola Reston incident in Luzon. Manila was banking on its first shipment of pork products to Singapore to entice other pork importers to obtain their requirements here. In February last year, authorities from the World Health Organization, World Organization for Animal Health and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations tested six people and hogs from the Pandi farm in Bulacan positive of the virus. This incident prompted the government to kill some 6,500 hogs in the infected farm. No Ebola Reston cases have been detected since. Following the discovery of the filovirus in crab-eating macaques monkeys in Reston, Virginia, an investigation tracing the infection was conducted by the US Center for Disease Control. The monkeys were imported from the Philippines, which had no previous record of Ebola infections. It was suspected that the monkeys contracted both diseases while in transit aboard KLM Airlines before reaching Reston. Shipments were tracked to New York City, Texas and Mexico City, none of which produced cases of infection. The virus, which reemerged in Italy in 1992 and again in a monkey export facility in Laguna province in the Philippines in 1996, had been confined to monkeys and the detection in hogs is the first time it has jumped species. According to the World Health Organization, the virus can be transmitted to humans, without causing illness in healthy adults. — NPA, GMANews.TV