Dr. Emmanuel Estipona, Legazpi City Veterinary Office chief (PNA photo by Emmanuel Solis)
LEGAZPI CITY – The city government has been qualified and now ready to have its Local Meat Inspection Services (LMIS) after it passed the evaluation and validation conducted in September by a team from the National Meat Inspection Services (NMIS) in Manila.
In an interview on Thursday, City Veterinarian Dr. Emmanuel Estipona, said the Double AA slaughterhouse here will be run and managed by the LMIS without any supervision from the NMIS starting this November.
“Before the approval, there is a plant manager from the NMIS supervising the operation of the city abattoir of Legazpi and we are giving this agency a 25-percent share of the revenue collected by the slaughterhouse annually. But with our own LMIS, we will automatically manage the slaughterhouse without any supervision from them (NMIS) and are not required to give them the 25-percent share,” Estipona said.
He said the creation of the LMIS is part of the implementation of the Mandanas Ruling that would allow it to operate without the supervision of the NMIS.
Estipona said the existing slaughterhouse is now part of the income-generating agencies of the city government.
An average of 100 to 130 animals are butchered daily in the facility, which earns for the city more than PHP17 million a year from the slaughtering service fees, but the numbers are expected to soon increase.
“This year, we are targeting PHP20 million in revenue a year from slaughtering services from the average of 100 to 150 pigs and five to 10 cattle. This additional income could be used to expand the present services of the slaughterhouse,” Estipona said.
He added that the city government is set to build a "new slaughterhouse building so that the existing slaughtering services would not be disrupted and ensure a sufficient supply of meat products in our markets.”
Estipona said his office is now preparing all the documentation to comply with the requirements for constructing the new facility at the 6,000-square meter lot owned by the city government in Barangay Taysan.
“We are just awaiting the PHP77-million grant from the World Bank (WB) to be downloaded to the national government’s Philippine Rural Development Program (PRDP) under the Department of Agriculture (DA) and it will also be released to the city government after complying with all the requirements set by the PRDP,” he said.
He said the project would be equipped with a cold storage and a cutting plant, which could keep the slaughtered animals away from contamination. (PNA)
