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THE Department of Agriculture on Monday assured the public that the
department has been taking concrete steps to stabilize the domestic
supply and prices of chicken and pork, in the light of escalating
production costs and tightening global supplies.
Agriculture Assistant Secretary Salvador Salacup
said the department’s officials have been “continuously in
touch” with leaders of the livestock and poultry subsectors, to
monitor the domestic market situation and work out further
intervention measures that might be needed to further boost domestic
production, and stabilize both supply and prices of these basic
foodstuffs.
Salacup said that regular and new productivity
programs put in place by the various attached agencies of the
department have assured “at least 90 percent self-sufficiency”
in pork and chicken, while importations would cover present or
potential supply-demand gaps.
He said retail prices have inched up “mainly
due to increased prices of feed ingredients of which a substantial
portion are imported, such as soybean meal, bone meal, fishmeal,
calcium and other minerals.”
Meanwhile, Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap on
late Sunday night left for Rome to attend a high-level conference on
world food security to be hosted by the United Nations Food and
Agriculture Organization.
The High-Level Conference on World Food Security
will be held from June 3 to 5 at the organization’s headquarters
in Rome, where heads of state and governments from across the globe
will gather to discuss strategies and initiatives that will squarely
address the current challenges to global food security.
-- Ira Karen Apanay
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