By Dean Aubrey Caratiquet
In anticipation of high demand for meat products as the Christmas season approaches, the Department of Agriculture (D.A.) began enacting measures to stabilize food prices and ease the strain on wallets of Filipino consumers.
On Friday (Dec. 5), the agency enforced a maximum suggested retail price (MSRP) on pork in Metro Manila to shield buyers from price gouging while ensuring a fair return in the pork industry value chain.
Under a new administrative circular, pork liempo will be capped at P370 per kilo, while kasim and pigue will be priced no higher than P330 per kilo across public and private wet markets in the National Capital Region (NCR).
The price cap on these swine products was ironed out after the agency held consultations with the pork industry stakeholders and meat retailers.
Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu-Laurel Jr. said in a statement, “We have to restore some sanity in the retail price of pork, a favorite protein source among Filipinos that is in high demand especially during the Christmas season.”
Secretary Laurel likewise lamented reports of pork products with unusually high prices recorded by the agency’s Agribusiness Marketing and Assistance Service in recent weeks, notably that of liempo reaching as much as P480 per kilo in early November.
The Agriculture chief declared, “Those prices are absurd given how farm gate prices have fallen recently, threatening the viability of small and medium-sized hog raisers.”
The D.A. had earlier struck an agreement with hog producers to establish a minimum farm-gate price of P210 per kilo—a move aimed at protecting growers’ margins after a period of depressed buying prices that threatened to push backyard and commercial raisers into losses.
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