Santo Domingo.- The national beef sector can easily meet the Dominican population’s meat demand and reactivate exports to the United States, halted during the 1980s on sanitary problems.

National Cattle Ranchers Association outgoing president Eric Rivero affirmed that the U.S. sanitary authorities have already certified two large local meat packing plants. “There hasn’t been more advance because the central laboratory has many needs, but there’s a capacity to respond to the local demand and reactivate the export to the USA.”

“The funds to solve this problem is what has paralyzed the topic of currency generation through meat exports,” Rivero said, and stated his confidence that local meat producers can also respond to the standards of quality of foreign markets, as they do with important hotel chains in the tourism regions.

Currently the country’s producers have more than 2 million heads of cattle, a business the Ranchers say generates nearly 200,000 direct jobs and many more indirect ones.

In the last two years US$144 million worth of the different types of meat were imported.

What’s needed

National Livestock Agency director Angel Faxas said the Central Veterinary Laboratory (Lavecen), selected to test the meats to be exported has high tech equipment, and is almost ready to begin operations, “in around six or seven months.”