Singapore Revises Veterinary Import Conditions for Poultry and Poultry Products

On August 28th, 2024, the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) revised the import conditions for poultry products, with immediate effect. Importers are reminded that poultry and poultry products can only be imported from SFA-approved sources, and the current veterinary health certificates issued by the exporting countries should be still valid.

Main revisions for import conditions

Poultry and poultry products:

• High pathogenicity avian influenza (HPAI) virus is a notifiable infectious disease in the exporting country;

• The country has been free from HPAI in the past 12 months prior to the export. In the event of an HPAI outbreak, trade can only resume if there has been no HPAI occurrence in the past 28 days and the products have undergone sufficient heat treatment to inactivate the virus;

• The country does not use HPAI vaccination, or if it does, the approved vaccines used on the poultry should be not live or live-attenuated, and meet WOAH Terrestrial Manual;

• The meat shall be born and raised in the country of origin;

• Pre-slaughter and post-slaughter inspections have been conducted and no infectious or communicable diseases have been found;

• Slaughter, processing, packaging, and storage are carried out under official veterinary supervision;

• Retort processed meat products (such as canned meat) have undergone heat treatment (sterilization value not less than Fo3) in sealed containers to achieve commercial sterility and can be stably stored at ambient temperature.

• Pathogen reduction treatments (PRTs) can only be applied to unprocessed raw meat and must be SFA-approved up to maximum use levels.

Additional Conditions for Chilled Poultry:

The product must not come from thawed frozen poultry, and should be sealed in leak-proof packaging with a shelf life of at least 10 days at or below 4℃ from the packing date.