The Department of Agriculture (DA) warned the public on Thursday not to buy onions as big as apples or fists from local markets because they were most likely smuggled and could have food safety risks.
This developed as the government is working towards increasing the country’s onion production, as consumers continued to deal with high prices.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who is concurrently the Agriculture chief, said the move is his government’s response to the crisis because it is a “demand and supply situation.”
“What we’ve done is we have increased the supply. It’s very, very simple,” he said in a taped interview with Bloomberg in Davos, Switzerland.
“The long-term solution, of course, will be to increase production. And that’s what we are working on. So, these are measures that we are doing, these interventions are, I think, until we get in place, the systems that will start to get our production levels up,” he added.
The DA has approved the importation of 21,060 metric tons of red and yellow onions to pull down its prices in wet markets, which still hover around P400 to P550 per kilo.
But the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) warned Filipinos to shun the huge bulbs being sold locally, as they could have pesticides or chemicals that are harmful to their health.
“We are monitoring these closely,” BPI director Gerald Glenn Panganiban said in a television interview. “It is not easy to distinguish local onions from smuggled or imported ones.”
“What we see now are smaller onions being sold in the markets. The big onions are packed properly and clean looking, so technically speaking it’s hard to distinguish them (from local variants),” he added.
Panganiban said the DA and BPI were talking with retailers who sold big onions and asked where they got them so they could trace their sources.
As smugglers did not have the necessary documents like a phytosanitary permit to bring in onions from abroad, Bureau of Customs spokesman and Customs Operation chief Arnaldo dela Torre said these onions would be subject to letters of authority, for their seizure and detention, and their peddlers would go under a procedure for warrants of seizure and criminal cases.
At the same time, Dela Torre noted the BOC was not keen on filing complaints against Philippine Airlines flight crew members who were caught bringing in undeclared agriculture products as “pasalubong” or bring-home gifts.
On January 10, 10 PAL flight crew members were found to have brought in onions, lemons, and strawberries from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and Dubai, United Arab Emirates without the necessary permits.
Dela Torre, however, said they may take action regarding the “behavior” of the crew, who allegedly tried to destroy their imported goods, as the BPI previously said the crew may face disciplinary sanctions over the incident.
Curiously, onion prices in government-run Kadiwa stores rose from P150 per kilo to P200 per kilo, an ABS-CBN television report noted yesterday, even as prices in two Quezon City markets began to drop from P280 to P330 per kilo from a high of P720 late last year.
DA Assistant Secretary Kristine Evangelista urged the public to continue to patronize the Kadiwa stores, noting that the P200 per kilo of red onions was the price farm cooperatives were selling them at.
The onion importation would be calibrated, the President said, but like sugar, bringing in more stocks will depend on the local production rate.
“It’s very simple analysis, you look at our production rate, and how many how much we produce and how much is the demand. And there’s no way you have to import,” he said.
Dela Torre said that as per the procedure under Presidential Decree 1433 or the Plant Quarantine Decree of 1978, the BOC must confiscate the products.
He said bringing in agriculture products to the country without sanitary and phytosanitary clearance certificates as well as a permit from the BPI is not allowed regardless of the quantity.
“This is to protect the country’s agri-industry against pests and diseases,” dela Torres said, as he welcomed the criticisms of several senators over the agency’s seizure of the products.