Philiipines-Condemned Meat getting into food chain.

PHILIPPINES-CONDEMNED MAT GETS IN FOOD CHAIN.

THE GOVERNMENT will now go after the sources of "double dead" meat to protect consumers and contain a possible disease outbreak in hog farms, Agriculture officials said late last week.

Instead of only confiscating illegally transported meat products in markets, the National Meat Inspection Service (NMIS), Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) and local government units will target the source of so-called hot meat, BAI Director Davinio P. Catbagan said in an interview.

Meat of animals that die usually of sickness even before they are slaughtered are called "double dead" meat.

"We will not only burn the confiscated meat. We will determine the source of the dead animals to know if hog farms have had outbreaks or the meat is just collected from backyard farms," Mr. Catbagan said in Filipino.

Dampened demand

High retail prices and the scare on the non-lethal Ebola Reston have dampened the demand for pork products. Pork is sold at P160-P190 per kilogram (kg) in markets this month, higher than the P150-P190/kg in January.

"Because of what is happening with the hog industry, the consumers need to be assured that what they eat is safe [from any diseases]," NMIS Executive Director Jane C. Bacayo said in an interview. "We are not only dealing with the Ebola Reston, we might also be dealing with other animal diseases," she added.

The agencies would start raiding suspected sources of "double dead" meat in the second quarter.

"There are buyers who go around the swine farms in Bulacan and buy dead hogs saying that it will be fed to catfish," Albert R. T. Lim, Jr., president of the National Federation of Hog Farmers, Inc., said.