THE proposal to raise duties levied on frozen pork jowl through a reclassification was bucked by the United States, one of the Philippines’s top suppliers of the key ‘sisig’ ingredient.
In a position paper submitted to the Tariff Commission (TC) dated September 28, the US National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) maintained that pork jowl should be classified as edible offal under HS code 0206.
Earlier, the Department of Agriculture (DA) filed a petition to slap higher tariffs on imported pork jowl by reclassifying it a swine meat under HS code 0203.
‘A pork jowl is obtained from the cheek/head area of the pig. Removing the jowl from the head does not change its anatomical origin,’ the NPPC said, citing the World Customs Organisation (WCO).
‘Treating the intact swine head as offal while treating a portion cut from that same head as conventional muscle meat would create a distinction based principally on where the product was separated, rather than what the product is,’ it added.
Furthermore, the NPCC pointed out the December 2025 US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) ruling, which revoked a 1991 ruling that classified fresh and frozen pork jowls as swine meat based on its anatomical origin.
The industry group said the ruling relied on the WCO Harmonized System Explanatory Notes, which specifically include ‘heads and cuts thereof’ within edible offal under HS 0206, thus ‘directly relevant to any proposal to classify pork jowls under HS 0203.’
Also, the NPPC cited the recent European Union (EU) customs wherein German customs classified frozen beef cheeks derived from the head or cheek area as edible offal and parts of heads.
While the Binding Tariff Information (BTI) concerns cattle, the NPCC stressed that ‘it demonstrates the application of the same HS distinction to a comparable head-derived product.’
‘The EU interpretation did not treat removal of the cheek from the head as transforming it into conventional muscle meat,’ it added.
Under the DA’s petition lodged with the TC, frozen pork jowl should be classified as swine meat and levied 25 percent tariffs, from the current 10 percent rate.
If this materializes, duties imposed on the commodity will be further raised to 40 percent for out-quota shipments when Executive Order (EO) 62 lapses in 2029.