Although the Dominican Republic has still not received any official notification from Haiti, a commission of five officials is traveling to the neighboring country today, Wednesday 12 June in search of a solution to the ban on Dominican chicken and egg imports. Haiti banned the imports on the unfounded basis that there is bird flu in the DR.
For this purpose, following an hour-long meeting yesterday, Tuesday 11 June, President Danilo Medina appointed the ministers of Agriculture, Luis Ramon Rodriguez, Industry and Commerce, Jose Del Castillo Savinon, and Public Health, Freddy Hidalgo, as well as the ambassador Roberto Martinez Villanueva and the director of the Dominican Republic Center for Exports and Investments, Jean Alain Rodriguez to the mission.
Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Luis Ramon Rodriguez said they expected to meet with the Haitian ministers of Industry and Commerce, Health and Agriculture. “We believe that within the next few hours this issue will be put aside, due to the fact that there is a series of incoherencies in the communication, because there has never been a formal communication from the Haitian authorities, but instead it seems that it was the Haitian press that was saying that we have bird flu here, when in reality, we do not have it,” stated the Minister of Agriculture.
Meanwhile, yesterday, Tuesday 11 June, traders in Dajabon, on the border with Haiti said that the Haitian boycott of Dominican poultry and eggs was having a huge impact on farmers and traders who supply the one million eggs and the 25,000 chickens that are sold to Haiti each day. Local traders told Hoy newspaper that they thought that the measures taken by Haiti were “reckless and counter-productive”. Jose Lopez, the president of the Association of Poultry Producers in the North (Asopollon) said that the farmers were hoping that the Dominican and Haitian governments could resolve this problem, which was caused by unfounded rumors of an outbreak of bird flu in the Dominican Republic.