Campaign versus vegetable smuggling heats up

An early morning raid at the Food Terminal Inc. on Oct. 24 by the Department of Agriculture's Task Force on Anti-Smuggling foiled the vegetable smuggling bid of Bigland Trading Enterprises worth more than P2 million.

The contraband yielded 6.6 tons of assorted vegetables from China. Misdeclared as apples were three container vans of ginger, pepper, carrot, and onion.

The raiding team, composed of DA Undersecretary Ernesto Ordoñez, head of the task force, Commissioner Antonio Bernardo of the Bureau of Customs, Romeo Royandoyan of KiloSaka and Mountain Province Gov. Sario Malinias, found the commodities abandoned with no claimant at the Food Terminal Inc. in Taguig, Metro Manila.

This was the fourth raid conducted by the task force on smuggling in their relentless campaign against outright and technical smuggling of agricultural produce from China.

The first one conducted weeks ago hauled in 248 boxes of ginger, carrot and bell pepper weighing 2,530 kilograms. The other raids that followed yielded contraband produce that according to government and farmer organizations is slowly killing the country's vegetable industry.

In a raid at the Manila International Container Port, the team also opened three container vans full of carrot, ginger and bell pepper. The importer did not have the required import permits and phytosanitary certificates for the 8,300 cartons of about 90 metric tons of vegetables.

The anti-smuggling task force invited leaders of the farmer organization – this time, Royandoyan of KiloSaka – to let them see that the campaign is serious and will be pursued without let-up. Whereas before, the contraband is only confiscated – in the new campaign, the equipment such as trucks, containers and other paraphernalia will be confiscated and the illegal importers hailed to court. (AFIS)