P20-M smuggled pork seized in Pampanga

Anti-smuggling operatives recovered yesterday at a cold storage plant in Mexico, Pampanga some P20 million worth of smuggled frozen pork from China that had reportedly been stolen from a Bureau of Customs (BoC) warehouse recently.

"We held the manager of the cold storage plant to help investigators get to the bottom of the incident," Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) chief Jesus Verzosa said.

"Some enterprising BoC personnel, in cahoots with the smugglers, stole almost two container vans of the smuggled meats from China last August," Verzosa said, adding the plant is being rented by one Arnold Polintan.

The seized "hot meat" were found in six container vans at the Kayabe Cold Storage and Ice Plant, Senior Superintendent Don Montenegro, chief of the police’s Anti-Smuggling Task Group (ASTG) said. BoC’s Task Force Anti Smuggling (TFAS) also took part in the raid.

Personnel at the plant said the meat products were intended for a  Pampanga-based food processing company.

Montenegro said the seized goods could be part of the 11 container vans of frozen meat products released by the BoC to the Eastern Trading Corp. in June.

The Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) said BoC’s release of the frozen pork, all imported from China, turned out to be based on fake documents.

Authorities learned of the disappearance when the seized goods were about to be buried in Sta. Rita, Pampanga as ordered by BAI.

"The BoC apparently burned only one half of the contents of each of the seized container vans to show to the public that the condemned meats have all been burned," Verzosa said.

BoC initially examined the contents of the four reefer vans containing the smuggled goods last Sept. 1 after they were found by police agents. The vans were then sealed and transferred to the Sigma Storage and Warehouse at Manila Harbour Centre even as BAI officials recommended that they be buried.

After a month, a special committee formed by BoC Commissioner Napoleon Morales decided to "bury" the meat in Sta. Rita, Pampanga, but this was rejected by town officials. It was at this stage when police discovered that half of the contraband was missing.

Nicanor Briones, chairman of the Agricultural Sector Alliance of the Philippines (AGAP) said that part of the missing frozen pork products ordered destroyed by BAI had been processed into fish feeds, while the other half might have probably found their way to manufacturers of food products.

In an interview with The STAR, Briones said half of the frozen meats from China uncovered by police agents in four 40-foot reefer vans at the Port of Manila in August, had already been processed into fish meals in a factory in Malabon and the other half  "probably found their way to food processors."

"Those which were found missing before the supposed burial probably landed in the hands of food processors since only they can avail themselves of big import quantities of pork. It is improbable that the missing frozen pork landed in wet public markets," he said.

But Briones quoted BAI experts as saying that processed fish meals are safe for fish consumption, as are those processed for humans since the smuggled goods had been kept frozen. — With Cecille Suerte Felipe and Ric Sapnu