THE RECENT LIFTING OF the ban on the importation of poultry products does not mean that the market will be flooded with European products.
This is according to director of the Caribbean Poultry Association (CPA), Dr Desmond Ali, who addressed its fourth annual symposium at the Courtyard Marriott Hotel yesterday.
“What we are trying to do in the Caribbean Poultry Association, we have the capacity to make this region not only self-sufficient, we can export product. We are at the cutting edge of the science here. Our production is as competitive as the production in Brazil and production in the US,” he said.
Flu to blame
He also explained the reason for the ban on European imports was as a result of the avian flu, also known as the bird flu, which the Caribbean has never had.
“One of the reasons why we had this ban on products coming in from Europe is that the Europeans, including England, had very bad attacks of avian influenza. We have never had avian influenza in the Caribbean. We do not want to import that product to bring the disease into the region.
“In fact, under the International Association for Animal Science, called the OIE, based in France, you cannot trade poultry that has origins in an area where there is avian influenza. Right now there is avian influenza in Holland for instance, so that poultry coming out of Holland will not be allowed into the region. And that is the reason why poultry was not allowed here from England for quite a while,” he said.
When asked why the region did not export poultry if we were so cutting edge, he said legislation prevented farmers from doing so.
“The problem has to do with what I call TBT or technical barriers to trade. It has nothing to do with quality; it has to do with those technical barriers to trade. And, more importantly, it has to do with the fact that the legislative packages in the region have not been brought up to date as they should have been.
“Under the WTO [World Trade Organisation] there is a thing called the SPS agreement, sanitary and phytosanitary agreement, and even though all of our countries signed the WTO agreements in 1994, we have not implemented the SPS element of the WTO agreements,” he said. (RA)
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