THE chicken in your plate of chicken rice could have travelled more than you did in the past week. All the way from Germany, to be exact.
Or the fish in your fish and chips could have come from Namibia. In an effort to stabilise food prices in Singapore, the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) - the nation's official pantry - has been actively sourcing for food from a diverse range of countries, some as far-flung as South African nation Namibia.
Chile and the Philippines are the newest countries to be approved to sell pork to Singapore, with a slaughterhouse in southern Philippines getting the go-ahead just last week.
Poultry from New Zealand and Chile can also be expected here by the end of the year, said AVA spokesman Goh Shih Yong.
Some Singaporeans, like 26-year-old customer service manager Franza Lee, were surprised at the unusual places from where the country imports food from.
"I didn't expect Singapore to be importing chicken from Germany," she said, as she had only known that Singapore imports poultry from Malaysia.
Prices of food ranging from rice to chicken have soared in recent months, due to a various unrelated factors around the world.
There has been rising demand from emerging economies like China and India, while supply is dwindling at the same time due to bad weather and farmers switching to biofuel crops.
High oil prices are contributing to higher cultivation and distribution costs for food, and commodity traders have been accused of driving up prices with speculative trading.
The global rice price, for example, has risen 74 per cent in the past year, and frozen chicken mid-joint wings, which went for $5.45 a kg at FairPrice last year, now cost $5.80.
Diversification is one of the multi-pronged approach that the AVA is using to keep food prices stable, said Mr Goh. Besides that, keeping Singapore accessible as an open market also means that traders can bring in food items at competitive prices, he said.
Thirdly, AVA has also adopted a risk management approach to make sure that while food safety is not compromised, Singapore's import requirements will not be overly demanding.
Only meat and eggs require pre-market accreditation - checks are conducted on processing plants and abattoirs before their food produce can be approved for import here.
Still, safety is a priority.
The Straits Times reported that an independent test it commissioned showed that six types of fish sold here had less than 0.5ppm of mercury in them. The United States' Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has stipulated that fish must not contain more than 1ppm of mercury, and so have equivalent bodies in the European Union, Australia and New Zealand. But the AVA here has set the bar higher - at no more than 0.5 ppm.
As far as the demand for safe and affordable food is concerned, AVA's diversification efforts have borne fruit.
In late February, four new types of fish from Namibia hit local supermarket shelves: chilled snoek, frozen hake, blue shark and pink ling, which come in fillet, steak and cutlet forms.
The AVA has given new suppliers in Belgium, Brazil, China, Chile, France, South Africa and Taiwan the green light to export frozen pork to Singapore.
Meanwhile, AVA is also considering lifting the ban on Malaysian pork.
A new centralised pig farm in Sarawak could be expected to meet about 30 per cent of Singapore's pork requirement by 2017, reported The Star last week.
However, pork from Sarawak would not be here any time soon as it would take at least three more years to settle farmers in the new facility, and then, possibly get AVA's green light, the Straits Times reported.
Malaysian pork has been banned since 1999, when the Nipah virus struck pig farms there and killed more than 100 pig farmers.
For secretary Annabelle Khoo, 28, where her food comes from is not an issue so long as it is safe and affordable.
Production engineer Vincent Ng, 28, agreed: "As long as AVA does its job, I don't really bother (about where the food comes from)."
