Stricter laws needed to curb meat smuggling

Rep. Monico O. Puentevella of the lone district of Bacolod City, Negros Occidental, has taken the cudgels for the country’s meat producers who are hurting from excessive importation and rampant smuggling.

In a privilege speech, he exhorts his colleagues to enact legislation that would protect the domestic meat industry. It is bad enough, he says, that there is widespread dumping of imported commodity; worse, there is rampant smuggling of pork and murabeef.

The solon further stresses that in the past, the hog industry survived crisis after crisis that visited the country. Among them the collapse of the economy, the plunge of the Philippine peso and the outbreak of the foot-and-mouth disease. But it will not surmount the present problem. This is so because though viruses and economic slumps have a natural life span, greed does not.

True, a number of piggeries had closed down but majority survived. And new ones continue to sprout across the country.

But these days, the local swine industry is seriously threatened by the flooding of pork, carabeef and other frozen meat resulting in unprecedented plunging prices, downsized business opportunities and loss of jobs.

The first blow came when the rules against importations were relaxed. Then, the economy was in a slump, the solution was to allow more importation. The second blow came after giant meat processors were allowed to source murabeef or carabao meat as addition to corned beef or pork replacement in their processed products.

In the year 2001, some 29 million kilograms of imported meat were brought into the country. This year, based on the volume trend from January to August, total importations will most likely increase to a thumping 11 percent or 32,702,212 kilos.

Murabeef from India — a country that is not FMD-free according to the Organization Internationale de Epizooties (OIE) — is projected to reach 49,053,318 kilos this December, an increase of 11 percent from last year. This huge volume of imported meat displaces 817,555 heads of locally produced hogs. Most of the excess murabeef find their way into supermarkets and wet markets — at dirt-cheap prices.

In the case of pork most of the contraband items came from China and South Korea. These are misdeclared as fruits with fruits over them in the packaging in refrigerated vans. Though some shipments are confiscated, most of the volumes also find their way into market outlets.

"Speaking of megabucks, these tons of smuggled pork," explains Puentevella, "are flooding the markets and I am not just talking of pork meat — even minor cuts like pork liver and skin at appalingly low prices."

Before the menace of excessive importation and contraband sourcing of pork, the country’s swine industry was valued at P83.535 billion. The big players employed 45,000 workers while an additional 2.25 million comprise the backyard raisers. Another two million Filipinos are dependent on the swine industry in allied industries like corn and copra farming, veterinary medicine making, feed milling, feed hauling and product distribution.

The Bacolod City solon is calling for sterner laws against smugglers, stricter implementation and swift justice, not just confiscation of smuggled stuffs. Otherwise, he says, "we would be killing our very own swine industry which gives millions income opportunities in these dire economic times."