DAVAO and Soccsksargen regions, which are known to have high volume of hog production, were tapped by the Department of Agriculture (DA) to help address the high demand of livestock in Metro Manila’s market that resulted to high prices of meat.
Agriculture secretary Manny Piñol said Saturday, April 08, during his meeting with hog raisers’ associations from both regions that they are seeking for their help to resolve the plight of meat consumers in Metro Manila which is much affected by the sudden decline of hog production and increase of its demand.
“To address the high price of meat in Metro Manila, DA is asking the hog producers of both regions to consider shipping their meat to Metro Manila and DA will offer to subsidize the transport to ease it up kasi masyadong mataas ang presyo (its expensive),” he said.
If the live-weight of hog here is at P115 per kilo, it is much higher in Manila which is pegged at P130 per kilo and if the price of the meat here in Mindanao is at P200 per kilo, in Manila it might reached up to P250, Piñol said.
Considering the problem in Metro Manila, DA is looking at the possibility of networking hog raisers from the two regions with the DA acting as the facilitator.
“We are looking (for) emergency program where the DA will establish freezer vans in Malate. We will bring in meat already from the processing plants of Mt. Matutom and also Davao kung saan namin i-stock (ang mga meat) to be made available to the market vendors association,” he said.
While in their long term program, they are planning to establish a network of small outlets such as sari-sari stores that would be accredited by the DA.
They will give chest freezers where they can unload a certain number of kilos every store to be made available in the neighborhood.
“Sa tingin natin (We think that) this will easily lower the price of meat in Metro Manila,” he said.
According to Piñol, the increased of demand of meat today is due to the cleansing campaign of DA against smuggled meat which was stop after reviewing the application and issuance of sanitary and phytosanitary import clearance, wherein they were able to identify fake importers.
“There was really unexpected and sudden increase demand for meat and all the while I thought that we did something wrong [but] it is actually a result of something we did right,” he said.
Meanwhile, the hog raisers committed to stop raising the prices of meat anymore, pegged it at the maximum of P115 per kilo for the two regions and let their hog mature to a more marketable weight that would increase production.