Lack of Ebola-free certificate stalls RP pork export

The absence of an Ebola virus-free certificate for Mindanao would stall for another year the resumption of Philippine pork exports to Singapore. “Unlike FMD (foot-and-mouth disease), [wherein] we do not have to get the approval of the World Animal Health Organization, we have to prove that we are Ebola-free, and the results of the antigen kits will prove that," Efren Nuestro, director of the Bureau of Animal Industry, said Tuesday. The government is waiting for antigen kits from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in the US to test the country's pork exports, particularly in Mindanao where the first shipments to Singapore would come from once things are in place. “We are prioritizing Mindanao, especially General Santos, since our first ever pork exports will come from this area," Nuestro said. Phytosanitary experts from Singapore arrived in March to inspect facilities in Mindanao, as part of measures to ensure that the pork products would be safe for human consumption. An outbreak of Ebola Reston virus – a species of the Ebola – in several farms in Pandi, Bulacan in 2008 stalled an earlier bid by the Philippines to ship up to 50,000 metric tons of pork to Singapore. The Matutum Meat Packing Corp. in Polomolok, South Cotabato was about to ship its first batch of pork and pork products to Singapore when the departments of Health and Agriculture confirmed the presence of the virus in the country. Matutum Meat was the first and only processing plant accredited by the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) of Singapore. Around six thousand pigs were culled in February 2009 to depopulate the Bulacan hog farm where the Ebola Reston virus was first detected. The Philippine government sought help from the World Health Organization in controlling the virus, which resurfaced after it was first discovered 19 years ago in macaque monkeys that Laguna-based Ferlite Farms had been exporting to the Hazelton Research Product Laboratories in Reston, Virginia. —VS, GMANews.TV