Filipinos love ham at Christmas almost as much as they love the season – but public fears, local government restrictions and a cutback in production because of African swine fever (ASF) could spoil this year’s festivities. Reports of ASF-infected pigs dying or being culled in large numbers have led to a drop in demand for pork products. The disease does not affect humans, but local governments in several provinces have banned pork and processed meats – and the worst casualty could be the holiday ham. “Usually by September or October, processed meat manufacturers are already building up ham production,” said an industry analyst who uses the pen name David Ramirez. “Creating one piece of ham requires several tedious processes, but what if you produce hams and nobody buys them? If companies buy raw materials now, they might go bankrupt.” Casino kidnappers in the Philippines will be caught ‘dead or alive’, Duterte warns as Chinese flock to gambling boom According to Jerome Ong, vice-president of the Philippine Association of Meat Processors Inc (PAMPI), one large company has already decided to slash its Christmas ham production by 15 per cent to 20 per cent. A Christmas without ham is sad, it’s like America’s Thanksgiving without the turkey Manuel Mogato, journalist Christmas is the biggest and longest festival in the Philippines , the one season when Filipinos across the country forget their diets and indulge themselves, and ham figures prominently in the celebrations. “A Christmas without ham is sad, it’s like America’s Thanksgiving without the turkey,” said Manuel Mogato, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist. The ham is served on noche buena , the Christmas Eve meal, and is brought out again on Christmas Day for a feast that usually involves a large family gathering. Filipinos consume all kinds of ham: sweet, salty, dried, smoked, drowned in syrupy pineapple glaze, whole or sliced. The meat is served by itself as an appetiser, or with fried rice, and put inside soft, fluffy bread rolls called pandesal . Ham bones are even sold separately, to be used as a base for Spanish-style stews. A family that can afford a whole ham at Christmas – which can cost thousands of Philippine pesos – will probably eat it over the course of a month, well into the new year. “For Filipinos, Christmas isn’t complete without ham,” said Sheila Valencia, a salesperson at Excelente in Manila, one of the country’s most famous ham shops, where queues are common during the holiday season. Some customers buy as little as 250g of ham, she said, “just enough to make their Christmas happy”. Duterte exonerates fired prisons chief, as Senate hearing into release of drug offenders continues ASF has, however, curbed Filipinos’ appetite for the holiday treat. “Because of [the disease], I think Filipinos will try to avoid ham, unless they are sure where the pork is from,” said Mogato, the journalist. Last week, the southern provinces of Cebu and Bohol banned the entry of pork and processed meat products from the main island of Luzon, with city veterinarians and inspectors sending back shipments. According to Ramirez, the processed-meat industry analyst, those two provinces alone account for about 15 per cent of PAMPI’s total production. “The industry is really alarmed,” he said. Appealing to Cebu and Bohol to reconsider their hardline stance, agriculture secretary William Dar said in a statement on September 20: “In these trying times, particularly in protecting our shores from the challenges of major diseases such as the ASF, we appeal for unity and brotherhood among our countrymen, most particularly our local chief executives.” But not only have the two provinces stood by their ban, they are about to be joined by others. President Rodrigo Duterte ’s home city of Davao is poised to issue an executive order prohibiting the import of all pork products and by-products – it is just awaiting the signature of the city’s mayor, Sara, who is the president’s daughter. In another province, Negros Occidental, authorities on September 24 burned 27kg of steamed pork buns from Manila that were confiscated at Bacolod airport. For PAMPI, the problem is that the local governments issuing the bans do not distinguish between fresh pork and processed meat. According to the trade group, the ban is based on the “mistaken belief” that processed pork products are carriers of the ASF virus. When is a gift to a Filipino cop not bribery? When it’s given with ‘gratitude’, President Duterte says “Processed meats are cooked at temperatures ranging from 70 degrees to 116 degrees Celsius for 40 to 70 minutes”, a process that kills the ASF virus, PAMPI said in a statement. On top of this, the group said its members used pork materials that come only from foreign and local sources that are free from ASF. Criticising the ban, analyst Ramirez said: “It’s a human rights violation – you’re depriving consumers of the right to access food. If I want to eat bacon, you’re depriving me of my right.” But there’s more than bacon and Christmas at stake. According to Ramirez, the meat-processing industry’s annual production is valued at more than 300 billion pesos (US$5.75 billion), and employs about 150,000 people. The “unnecessary and unwarranted ban”, as he calls it, “endangers this business and could result in seasonal workers being laid off”. “The industry is at a loss at the moment,” Ramirez said. “It doesn’t know what will happen within the next four months.”