US Senator Richard Lugar to visit PHL Oct. 28 - 31

United States Senator Richard Lugar, the ranking Republican in the US Senate foreign relations committee, will visit the Philippines from October 28 to 31 and meet with President Benigno Aquino III, the US embassy in Manila said in a statement.   Lugar is the US Senator who prominently denounced the poll fraud in the February 7, 1986 snap presidential election between then President Ferdinand Marcos and housewife Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino. Protests in the aftermath of that election led to the People Power revolt from February 22 to 25, 1986.   The US embassy said in a statement issued Friday that Lugar will also meet Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto del Rosario and some unnamed government officials.   Lugar’s visit is part of his Asia-Pacific tour meant “to encourage expansion of the Nunn-Lugar Global Cooperative Threat Reduction program,” the embassy said.   This program is designed to reduce “stockpiles of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, related materials, and delivery systems in nations around the world to address proliferation threats.”   Lugar is on his way out of the US Senate as the representative of the state of Indiana. Richard Mourdock, the Indiana state treasurer who is a favorite of the conservative Tea Party movement, ousted Lugar in the Republican primary earlier this year.  Lugar held his Senate seat for six terms since 1977.   Food safety   Lugar is also the ranking Republican on the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee.   The Philippines and the US are protagonists in a continuing dispute on meat food safety issues.   In a report issued in March 2012, the US Office of the Trade Representative said the Philippines'  "two-tiered system for regulating the handling of frozen and freshly slaughtered meat...imposes very high standards on the handling of frozen meat, which is primarily imported, that do not apply to the handling of freshly slaughtered meat, which is exclusively domestic."   The Philippines' National Meat Inspection Service (NMIS) has said there should be different rules for frozen meat and freshly slaughtered meat.   "Frozen meat and freshly slaughtered meat are two different products. [The US government] has been insisting that [the Philippine government] should subject freshly slaughtered meat to [refrigeration]," said NMIS spokesperson Atty. Jane Bacayo.   Bacayo also said there is no international standard for newly slaughtered meat held at ambient temperatures for a specified period of time. — with reports from Reuters/ELR, GMA News