The director general of Livestock, Marcelino Vargas clarified that meat imports are not banned, but these require permits from his department. He said that what his department is doing is clamping down on the practice of importing meat without the corresponding permit from his department. "No one has been prohibited from importing meat, even the Asociación Nacional de Importadores de Carne refuted the news," he said. He explained, "What is prohibited is the import of meat, leaving this in the docks while the permit is sought." He said that the permit must be requested prior to making the import to avoid the introduction of sicknesses in the DR. He also said that the import will also be banned if an importer requests a permission for one type of meat and then imports another. "What we want is to establish clear rules of the game, and the traditional importers support these measures," he said. "There are other importers that do not want to respect the rules and want to bring scraps of meat from the US that has been rejected because it does not fill the sanitary conditions."
