Sky Dragon luncheon meat found with African swine fever virus illegal here because of Hong Kong origin
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Products seized on March 25, 2019, from a resident returning to the Philippines were found to contain the African swine fever virus.
PHOTO: MANNYPINOL/FACEBOOK
Tee Zhuo
SINGAPORE - It is illegal to import a Hong Kong brand of canned luncheon meat, found by Philippine authorities to be tainted with the African swine fever virus.
This is because Hong Kong is not an approved source of meat and meat products, the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) said on Tuesday (June 18) in response to media queries.
It added that while the African swine fever virus is highly contagious among pigs, it does not infect humans.
In processed pork products, the virus should be inactivated if properly treated with heat, which generally means the bug becomes unable to infect animals.
"To mitigate the risk of incursion of African swine fever, SFA requires countries exporting raw pork to Singapore to be free from it," SFA said.
The Philippine Daily Inquirer reported last Friday that several cans of luncheon meat were seized at Clark International Airport in the Philippine province of Pampanga.
The county's agriculture secretary Manny Pinol had said in a Facebook post the same day that products seized on March 25 from a returning resident were found to contain the African swine fever virus.
In another post, he attached photos showing that the canned meat products were from the Sky Dragon brand, which is from Hong Kong.
SFA said on Tuesday that it has been monitoring the outbreak of the disease globally and has suspended all imports of pork and related products from affected areas, such as some regions in China.
For affected areas, only processed pork products from approved establishments that have been heat-treated to inactivate the African swine fever virus are allowed to be imported, the agency added.
More generally, for meat and meat products, only countries, establishments, and farms that have been accredited by SFA are allowed to export to Singapore.
Even then, imported food products from accredited sources are still subjected to import requirements and routine surveillance, inspection, and sampling programme, SFA added.
