The total volume of meat imports in the country surged by 50 percent year-on-year in January this year, data from the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) showed.
The Philippines imported 137.9 million kg of meat in the first month of the year, a huge increase from 92.02 million kg imported in January 2024, the bureau said,
Meat imports for January 2025 were also 17.2 percent higher than December 2024’s 117.77 million kg.
Pork made up the bulk of imports for January 2025, at 70.45 million kg, or 51.1 percent of all meat that entered the country during the month. By comparison, pork imports rose by 65.3-percent from the 42.61 million kg imported in the comparative year-earlier period.
Chicken followed with 45.63 million kg, or 33.1 percent of all imported meat in January 2025. Chicken imports for the period rose by 48.1 percent from January 2024’s 30.8 million kg.
Beef imports for January 2025 reached 19.9 million kg or 14.4 percent of all meat imports in the period, the BAI report said. The volume was 51 percent more than the 13.18 million kg of beef imports in January 2024.
Lamb imports in January 2025 were at 65,249 kg, up by 40.28 percent from January 2024’s 46,515 kg.
Some types of meat imports went down. The Philippines imported 1.93 million kg of buffalo for the period, a 63.2 percent slump from January 2024’s 5.24 million kg, while turkey imports plummeted by 94.2 percent to 7,500 kg from January 2024’s 130,318 kg. Duck imports only reached 18,544 kg, a dip by 25.3 percent from January 2024’s 24,835 kg.
Jess Cham, president emeritus of the Meat Importers and Traders Association, said over the weekend the country will continue to rely mainly on meat imports especially for pork, unless local producers can recover their production levels amid the threat of African swine fever.
“The high price of local pork has pushed the consumer to chicken, which is lower priced, and beef, which is now slightly higher priced compared to the past. This accounts for the increased volume of these proteins. DA forecast a pork production of 1.15 million tons in 2025. Even so, it is a far cry from the 2019 peak. Unless the hog industry can return to the previous production level and at competitive pricing, imports will continue to grow,” Cham said. The Philippine pork production in 2019 reached 2.3 million tons or 2.3 billion kilograms.
