THERE is no major concern on the supply of poultry products in Central Visayas, particularly in Cebu Province, despite the 45-day ban on the entry to Cebu of such products coming from Luzon.
This was what Dr. Ann Maribao, Department of Agriculture 7 spokesperson, told SunStar Cebu on Thursday, March 10, 2022, two days after Executive Order 9 of Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia took effect amid the bird flu outbreak in Pampanga and Bulacan.
According to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), the chicken egg production of Central Visayas from January to March 2021 was 15,400 metric tons, up 14.04 percent from 13,461 metric tons in the same period in 2020, Maribao noted.
She said the region is the third largest producer of chicken eggs in the country, with Bantayan Island in Cebu being the egg basket supplying most of the mainland and other parts of the country.
Central Visayas also has high annual growth compared to the other regions, Maribao said.
As of April 2021, PSA figures also show that the region had 19.13 million chickens, including the native chickens, broilers and layer chickens, up 15 percent from 16.63 million chickens in April 2020.
“Governor Gwen’s EO prohibiting the entry to the Province of Cebu of all live poultry and wild birds, that was only for 45 days. So we can say that that won’t greatly affect us,” she said, adding that Cebuanos are very resilient people.
Maribao said there are also other sources of protein, plant-based and animal-based, not just the chickens or eggs.
“There are many sources, so it’s not really a major concern,” she stressed.
Apart from that, Maribao said they had been conducting reviews on all arriving agricultural products under the Cebu Port Authority, and there were no poultry products that arrived from November 2021 to January this year.
As of Thursday, she said a medium-sized egg has a public market price of P6.50 to P7 apiece, stressing that there was no spike in the price. Meanwhile, the prices of dressed chicken range from P180 to P200 in public markets, with a P10 increment from February due to inflation and rehabilitation of facilities due to Typhoon Odette (Rai).