NMIS : The Battle for Safe Meats
Are you sure this steak is safe?” asked the glamorous lady to the waiter in one of the posh restaurants in Makati. That question of course is not without basis. Prior to the melamine milk scare, which of late has bogged the headlines, reports about unsafe imported meats reaching the public markets has been the topic of hushed conversations in coffee shops and ordinary sari-sari stores. Although the reports have yet to reach “scary” proportions, consumers are slowly getting aware of the need to check on the quality of the meats that they buy. For one, prices of pork, chicken and all types of meats have been escalating. And with the yearly threat of FMD and avian flu lurking around the corner, the buying public has become more careful with their meat purchases.
According to Section 5.1 of the Meat Inspection Code of the Philippines (Republic Act 9296), the Department of Agriculture’s National Meat Inspection Service (NMIS) is “the country’s sole controlling and competent authority which is tasked to implement policies, programs guidelines and rules and regulations pertaining to meat inspection and meat hygiene to ensure meat safety and quality from farm to table.” With a yearly budget of about Php160 million and 329 personnel tinder its wings, how is NMIS coping with this daunting task of ensuring safe meats to the public?
We recently sat down with Atty. Jane C. Bacayo, DVM, MPA, the current OIC-Executive Director of NMIS. Prior to his stint with NMIS, Atty. Bacayo was the OIC Regional ‘Technical Director for Operations of DA’s Region XI. Between 1999 and 2006, he was also the Regional Veterinary Quarantine Officer of DA’s Region XI-a position which paved the way to his learning the intricacies of meat inspection.
Excerpts
What were the changes that happened to NMIS since you assumed the position?
When I joined the NMIS in 2006, the first thing that I wanted to strengthen is the laboratory services because it’s really the most important part of the agency in the monitoring of the food safety of our food products. During that time, there was not, much equipment that we have. We just have the basic laboratory tests. The parasitological tests and sensoring and mycological tests are the only tests that we had. Through the support of the DA Sec, we have been given Php47 M. For 2008, he gave us PhPSoM for the upgrading and purchase of our equipment in the laboratory.
Where are the bulk of our meat establishments and slaughterhouses located in the country?
Majority of these are in Region 3, Central office-NCR and Region 4. In Mindanao, there are less slaughterhouses although there are a lot of livestock. The live animals are being brought to Metro Manila.
What is the main function of NMIS?
Most of our activities are in the inspection and accreditation of establishments. We inspect the animals that are being brought to be slaughtered in slaughterhouses and dressing plants. We conduct ad mortem and post mortem examinations. Aside from that, we also conduct inspection of all imported meat and meat products.
What do you do to ease the burden of accreditation?
We are giving the establishments more or less six months to comply with the requirements. But of course while they are doing the improvements of their facilities, we give them conditional accreditation so that we can supervise and provide technical assistance to them. We assist them in the planning, in the construction-the standards that they have to comply with. This is where we come in. If they really want to be accredited immediately, as early as the planning phase, they have to consult with us so that their design can easily be corrected. We only charge around Php3,000 for documentation and processing.
How far have you gone in your meat operations and inspection services?
We have already implemented the HACCP standards in our operations But, I have to admit that the problem that we are encountering are in these meat establishments that are not accredited. And those establishments which are not directly supervised by NMIS such as the wet markets. Of course, these are the problematic areas that we encounter. Here, we are working closely with the LGUs because under the Local Gov’t Code, and even in the Meat Inspection Code of the Philippines, primary jurisdiction is under the local government units. But in areas where the LGUs do not cooperate, we do it ourselves. We always do surveillance and monitoring and we observe the meat and meat products that are being sold and has not passed inspection of the NMIS. The common half-meat or double dead meat, we do confiscations of these meat products.
How many tons of meat .do you confiscate in a year?
When I first came in 2007, we have confiscated more or less 36 tons of half meat. These are a combination of double dead meat and those meats that are not allowed to be sold in the wet markets. These are the cara-beef. Well, the importation of cara-beef in India is allowed, selling of this meat in the public market is not allowed-only for processing.
What about the canned meat products?
This is under the joint jurisdiction of the Bureau of Food and Drugs. Whichever acquires jurisdiction first. If we’re the first ones to check, we can take jurisdiction over that.
Why do you consider the inspection of double-dead meat a complicated issue?
One complication is that when it is already in the slaughter house, we have no jurisdiction over the farms where they are being sourced.
How do you know that it’s double-dead meat?
By mere sight alone. Because if you have been in this office for some time, you can easily determine whether the meat is coming from a healthy animal or a dead animal or has not passed the inspection of the NMIS. And even a layman or an ordinary buyer, they will only look at the meat itself and they can easily detect if it’s double meat. The most common visual sign is that the meat is not properly cleaned. It is very pale. Most of the time, it has a greenish discoloration and very slimy. The odor is also very foul. These are meat products where the blood is not totally removed from the meat. It is a very good media for bacterial growth.
Do you have any jurisdiction over street foods?
We can also confiscate them if we find them unfit for human consumption. But this is the jurisdiction of so many agencies. The Bureau of Health, BFAD. That’s one of’ our problems. The intersection of functions. But what we do is that we always coordinate with these agencies and the LGUs.
Is it true that we are beginning to be the dumping site of illegal meats? I don’t think so because we have the same standards that these countries apply. We also apply the same foodex alimentarius standards. The lab tests that they do are also the same tests that we do.
A common illegal practice that we found out in our research is what we call the meat insertions in the ports. What do you do about this? That’s the practice that we want to be eliminated. There are meat products that we do not accept in the country. If we do not do 100% meat inspection, they will insert those meats at the back. So during the inspection of the Bureau of Customs and Inspection of the BAI, they will only inspect those boxes which are located in front. Those at the back are spared from inspection. But we work hand in hand with the Bureau of Customs to see that such practices are minimized or eliminated.
How do you eliminate such practice?
We have to be very vigilant and work closely with the Bureau of Inspection on those that are blacklisted. We do co-filing of these importers. In fact, we know some of them by face alone.
Your line of work entails danger. How do you protect your personnel?
Actually, we cannot do operations without the assistance of the police and the media. Without the camera, we are afraid to do this. We cannot do this with the policemen only. We have to work with media for documentation purposes and for our own safety and protection.
How do these meat smugglers operate?
Through misdeclaration. Sometimes, they will declare it as fisheries product, pero meat pala. Nalulusutan. Kailangan din namain talaga ng support ng private sector because PASG has jurisdiction of storages which are not accredited by NMIS. Our jurisdiction is only on accredited cold storages. Cold storages which are not accredited, we have to have a search warrant. There are a few. And we cannot force them to be accredited because they will always say we are not really storing meat products.
That’s Filipino ingenuity. But with the support of the private sector, may nahuhuli pa rin kami.
There has been this perception that some personnel in NMIS can be bribed. What’s your take on this? It has been a perception but we are trying our best to change this. I always see to it that we have some topics on value formation, graft and corruption in our training programs. Yes, we do have some rare cases of erring personnel but we have penalized all of them and we have even-cases of Regional Directors who have been fired from service because they have been proven guilty.
What is your message to our buying meat consumers?
When you buy meat in the wet public markets, you must look for the NMIS seal. This is an assurance that once it passes the NMIS, the meat is safe. And I’m advising the consumers to buy those -products which are labeled. You have to know where they are coming from. We do this for traceability purposes. And they have to buy products from accredited farms also.
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