Agriculture Minister Luis Ramon Rodriguez is pushing to resume exports of beef, chicken, pork and eggs to the US and other markets, including the Caribbean, in the near future.
As part of the program, the Director of Livestock Bolivar Toribio and Animal Health Director Rafael Nunez announced that epidemiological inspectors will certify farms and abattoirs in order to ensure that the measures recommended by the authorities are better implemented.
Toribio added that health inspections carried out in the country over the last three years show a low incidence of disease so the authorities’ plans should not be delayed. He said the Ministry of Agriculture is developing a health plan aimed at declaring the Dominican Republic free of diseases like avian flu and Newcastle’s Disease in chickens and praised the work that has been done within the program to control classical swine fever (CSF) in pigs.
In the case of cattle, Toribio said the diseases present in the Dominican Republic are common in most countries, and so are not internationally notifiable and that in order to export beef a traceability system that contains all the information about the food, such as the source, slaughter date and the name and location of the farm was all that needed to be established.
Nunez said the Dominican Republic is preparing to notify the World Animal Health Organization and the countries to which it will market livestock products about the start of surveillance programs, to demonstrate their high animal health status and to obtain certification for the areas that have been declared free of disease so that meat exports to international markets can restart.
He said that the Dominican Republic protocol complies with the procedures required by the World Trade Organization (WTO) for the marketing of livestock products.
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