110,000 kilos of illegal chicken, pork imports burned

SUBIC BAY FREEPORT — Some 110,000 kilos of illegally imported pork skin and frozen chicken leg quarters, which caused some strain between the Bureau of Customs (BOC) and the Department of Agriculture (DA), were finally buried at the landfill here at about 4:30 p.m. last Saturday.

"Excavators and backhoes dug up a huge hole in the landfill where the meat products were layered with lime before they were buried in the presence of representatives from the Commission on Audit, the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI), and other government offices," Benjamin Angeles, who heads the DA’s anti-smuggling task force, told The STAR yesterday.

The two shipments arrived here sometime last year without the required veterinary quarantine certificate (VQC). The pork skin came from Taiwan while the chicken leg quarters came from the United States. The two shipments were supposed to have been received by a firm called Creation, named as the consignee in the shipping documents.

Six months ago, the DA told customs officials to condemn the frozen meat products by unplugging the freezer vans containing them. The meat products were supposed to be burned and converted into fertilizer, but the BOC preserved them in their frozen state. There were reported attempts to turn the shipments over to a firm based in Angat, Bulacan for burning and conversion to fertilizer.

BOC deputy chief for operations Reynaldo Avelino agreed last week to the proposal of DA officials to bury the illegally imported products at the Subic landfill, thus ending the concern of some DA quarantine officers in Central Luzon that the products might find their way into the local markets.

Angeles said the meat products were buried under layers of lime to speed up their decomposition. "Security at the landfill site is very strict, so we need not fear scavengers digging up the buried meat products," he said.

Now that the controversy over the frozen meat products has been resolved, the DA’s quarantine officials find themselves in a quandary as to what to do with several vans of illegally imported luncheon meat worth about P2.5 million, which also arrived sometime last year without the required VQCs.

"That shipment remains problematic," Angeles said.

While Dr. Romeo Manalili, DA quarantine officer in Central Luzon, insisted there could be no exemption to requiring VQCs before any frozen or canned meat products can be imported into the country, a Malacañang official said the canned goods should be released anyway.

In a letter dated March 1, presidential adviser on special concerns Abraham Purugganan asked DA Secretary Luis Lorenzo Jr. to release the canned goods and "furnish this office of your action of release within seven days." The canned goods have so far remained at Subic since BAI officials said releasing them will be illegal.

Purugganan’s letter also said the DA, through the BAI, "is directed to issue the necessary document such as the (VQC) and release the container vans" loaded with a total of 4,790 crates of luncheon meat.

Reacting to the letter, Lorenzo’s legal consultant Benjamin Tabios issued a memorandum last April 5 to BAI director Jose Molina "on the matter of VQC in favor of Zone Swan International Inc."

Tabios cited Section 3 of his department’s Administrative Order 32, series of 2000, as pertinent to the canned goods at Subic. Pointing out that Zone Swan was a "qualified importer," he noted that "a qualified importer as defined in Section 1 who intends to import meat and/or meat products must first secure VQC import permit from the DA prior to the shipment of goods from the country or origin" and that "the importer shall submit a duly accomplished application form" and "pay the necessary fee" to the BAI.

He added that in the case of Zone Swan, "the operative (term) is qualified importer."

"Thus, even without the memorandum from Secretary Purugganan, if Zone Swan International Inc. is a qualified importer and it has filed an application. It shall be issued the corresponding VQCs, provided that the imported goods pass the quality standards," Tabios said in his memorandum.

He ended his memo with a statement that seems to pressure the BAI to act in favor of the importer, noting that Purugganan’s intervention "would only matter if the BAI unlawfully withholds the issuance of VQCs."

But Manalili insisted "there is absolutely no exemption to the requirement of VQCs before the importation of food products, and not after the goods have arrived." He said the BOC normally either auctions off smuggled canned goods or donates them to charitable institutions.