Los Angelenos to savor PHL bananas for the first time this week

It's official: Philippines is now the first Asian exporter of bananas to the United States after the arrival of Bukidnon Cavendish in Los Angeles last week, the Philippine Embassy in Washington said Sunday (PHL time).

In a news release on its website, the embassy said the 7,047 metric tons of highland bananas arrived at the Port of Long Beach near Los Angeles on September 9 and were transferred to a ripening warehouse and will be made available in stores this week.

According to Agriculture Attaché Dr. Josyline Javelosa, officials of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service of the US Department of Agriculture have worked with the Philippine Bureau of Plant Industry to ensure the shipment makes the US phytosanitary hurdles.

8 years after

The bananas will be marketed in the US under the Sweetio brand. They were exported by Dole Philippines to Dole Food Company Inc.

The bananas were shipped from the Mindanao International Container Terminal in Tagoloan, Misamis Oriental last Aug. 20.

Javelosa said the shipment – the first of some 3,000 metric tons the US hopes to import from the Philippines in 2013 – came nearly eight years after Manila first asked for access to the American market.

"Philippine bananas are among the best in the world and there is opportunity to bring in the unique and special banana varieties like lakatan and latondan, which Filipinos in the US have long been craving for and which Americans can learn to love,” said Javelosa.

The Philippines also exports bananas to Japan, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Korea, China, Singapore, the Middle East, Canada, Russia and Indonesia. — BM/VS, GMA News