No chicken imports for the holidays

The government will not be allowing the importation of chicken for the holiday season as there is enough poultry products in the market, the Department of Agriculture said.

Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) director Efraim Nuestro said there might even be a surplus of chicken in the market by the time the holidays roll in. “We are not going to import,” he said in a recent interview.

Poultry was one of the gainers in the agriculture sector this year. According to department’s first semester report, the poultry sector grew by 3.6 percent in the first half of 2011.

The subsector grossed P77.8 billion at current prices, up by 0.16 percent from the 2010 level.

Last year, the government allowed the import action of chickens to plug the supply gap in the country during the holiday season.

Nuestro also assured that the Philippines would not be importing from China and Vietnam due to bird flu fears. “There is still a ban for imports from those countries,” Nuestro said.