The American Chamber of Commerce of the Dominican Republic (AMCHAMDR) has welcomed the decision of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service of the United States (APHIS), which last week lifted the ban on imports of various vegetables and citrus fruits from the Dominican Republic.
The agricultural sector has been one of the most benefited from the DR-CAFTA (Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement), and was also the most affected by the ban imposed by the United States after learning of the presence of the Medfly in the country.
The AMCHAMDR has highlighted the efforts of the Dominican Government, which kept an open channel of information with the U.S. authorities about the status, monitoring and surveillance program to eradicate the Mediterranean fruit fly, as pointed out by Michael Guidicipietro, Deputy Assistant Administrator and Director of Phytosanitary Issues Management at APHIS.
The appearance of this pest has taught us some lessons, namely that food safety is a priority and is becoming an increasingly complex issue in the U.S. and other developed countries; therefore, there should be very effective measures in place to control the entire production and supply chain and be responsible for detecting problems and addressing them to prevent greater evils. Another is the need for us to diversify our production capacity with export quality. And thirdly, we must have institutional strength, with well-crafted arguments based on science and updated in order to minimise the impact of a product being prevented from being shipped to markets we have conquered with great effort and which others may take from us if we are left out of them.
