The Philippines Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has expanded its list of countries that are temporarily banned from exporting pork and pork products to the country.

According to reports, the FDA advisory service has officially banned the import of pork from a number of regions with confirmed cases of African swine fever (ASF). The ban came from imports from Vietnam, Zambia, South Africa, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Mongolia, Moldova and Belgium.

In the Philippines, there is currently no ASF and strict biosafety rules apply, but the import of banned pork products into the country continues.

In September 2018, the Ministry of Agriculture (DA) issued a memorandum that required a ban and prevention of the importation of processed products from pork from 14 countries, including China, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine.

Since then, the import of prohibited products from pork continued through the issuance of permits, but the Ministry of Agriculture called on the FDA to stop illegal imports and stop issuing permits for the import of prohibited products.

An emergency meeting was held this month, in which customs officials from the secretary's office participated.

According to reports, pork producers asked President Rodrigo Duterte to immediately order the creation of an Inter-Agency Task Force to combat ASF threat to the pig industry with a budget of £ 200 billion.