The Minister also took some time to warn Belizeans about the African Swine Fever - which affects livestock. The disease has been responsible for massive losses in pig populations and drastic economic consequences.
According to Mai, it's imported to countries like ours in airplane sandwich meat (yeah, you heard the right!) but he's hoping that the new measures being implemented by OIRSA can keep it at bay. Here's more:
Jose Mai, Minister of Agriculture
"We have another disease in the Dominican Republic African Swine Fever, now they are still trying to battle that disease. When you get African Swine fever in your country you are in serious problem's China had it they eradicated 50% of thier swine population, that is in the billions of dollars because once it gets to your farm you have to de-populate, you kill everything. Now, everyone is scared of having this in thier country, you have to understand that there are flights from Dominican Republic to Panama, Panama is the hub and from Panama you have Costa Rica, Salvador, Guatemala, including Belize. So, everyone is scared so Panama being the hub they are even more strict with people coming in from these regions because you understand something that, that disease African Swine fever is spread by people taking sandwiches from one country to the next, it's still in the meat. It doesn't affect humans but it does affect pigs. So if you take the remains that are thrown out of a plane and you go feed your pigs with it and it has African Swine fever you will get it. That is how it has been spread across the world. Asia has it, Europe has it, In this region only DR has it and we want it to be kept there not to spread anymore so we have to step up our game in the past we had some resistance that maybe we didn't need X-Ray machines, we didn't need the canine units but when I explained to our colleagues in Cabinet that if we don't do this our chances of opening markets to other Central American countries is being restricted because nobody wants to trade with a country who behaves irresponsibly."
