Alcala has announced that AO22 would not be scrapped, after it emerged that the US threatened to oppose the Philippines’ World Trade Organisation (WTO) application to extend its quantitative restrictions (QR) on rice, which would help the country achieve rice self-sufficiency.
According to the Manila Bulletin, Alcala said: “I will not beg to them. We are talking about the Filipino consumers’ health and the livelihood of rice farmers in the country. (...) We will push through with the implementation of the AO while we continue with our application in a normal process.”
US officials and meat industry leaders have been pushing for the Philippines to amend AO22, arguing that it unfairly favours local producers over exporters. A spokesperson for the US Meat Export Federation (USMEF) told GlobalMeatNews: “Our concern with the Philippines’ meat handling requirements is that they appear to treat domestically-produced and imported meat differently.
“We do not consider this differential treatment to be consistent with sound public health policy and we have encouraged the Philippines to incorporate the advice of US and Canadian experts as they develop new regulations to replace AO22.”
According to USMEF, the Philippines has published two draft administrative orders that together would replace AO22.
A month ago, USMEF, the National Meat Association (NMA), the National Pork Producers’ Council (NPPC) and the American Meat Institute (AMI) sent a joint letter to US agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack, expressing concern about AO22.
AMI vice president of international trade Bill Westman said: “We are working on this issue and strive to arrive a satisfactory solution based on sound meat handling practices for domestic and imported meat products and elimination of unjustified barriers to trade.”
In the letter, the organisations suggested that since the Philippines is one of the developing countries benefiting from the Generalised System of Preference (GSP), a programme granting it duty-free shipments to the US on certain commodities, it needed to make more of an effort to guarantee fair trading conditions for exporters.