Meat exports still on hold

[NewsWhore]

Eight years after the United States put a stop on Dominican meat imports, the Dominican Republic is still waiting to get a new federal license to export meat to the US. Almost every year since then, there have been announcements to the effect that the ban was being lifted and that meat exports would be renewed shortly. However, this has not happened, and apparently, according to Diario Libre, it is not likely to happen in the near future. The director of livestock for the Ministry of Agriculture tells reporters that the problem is one of "equipment in the slaughterhouses". Authorities from the United States say that the issues are of a phyto-sanitary nature and a lack of laboratories to test the meat. The newspaper says that the government has done very little to tackle the problem. Meat exports to the United States started to grow in the 1980s, and by 1998 they had reached 20,000,000 pounds. The problems started when the laboratories became careless, according to the paper, and the United States began to require a Federal Export License. Of the fourteen slaughterhouses operating in 1997, the new requirements and controls eliminated all but four. By 2000, the Dominican Republic no longer had a license to export meat and the government requested new inspections but, for some reason, the license has not been forthcoming, and meat imports have increased. Just last year, the country imported US$30 million in meat and offal.

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