Bare meat import details, hog growers ask customs bureau

DAGUPAN CITY—Hog growers and poultry raisers in the country have asked the Bureau of Customs (BOC) to provide the Department of Agriculture (DA) copies of documents on volume of imported meat and its importers to help stop the technical smuggling of meat.

Rosendo So, chair of the party-list group Abono and director of Swine Development Council (SDC), said if the DA has copies of the inward foreign manifest (IFM), smuggling and illegal importation could be stopped because the document could be used to verify the contents of container vans.

IFM is an international manifest that contains the list of all incoming imports per vessel and the details of products and their declared values.

“[It is a] document that cannot be tampered with, thus it is important [in the campaign] to check smuggling,” So said.

The country’s hog raisers are asking Customs Commissioner Rufino Biazon to provide the DA with the IFM because this was an agreement that he and SDC officials reached during a three-day convention in Cebu in April, So said.

He said the agreement also allowed representatives of hog growers to be present during inspection of meat imports.

He said DA has written the Department of Finance and BOC asking for copies of IFM, but the request has yet to be acted upon.

Backyard hog and poultry growers suspended the sale of pork and chicken for several days last month to demand a stop to meat smuggling that, they said, has been killing their industry.

So said importers declare prime meat cuts as offal (innards) because offal is charged a lower tariff of only 5 percent compared to 40 percent for prime cuts.

So said IFMs contain the country of origin of imports and are crucial in identifying smuggled shipments.

“The DA needs these IFMs to check if the cargo subject of inspection conforms to the VQC (veterinary quarantine certificate) issued by the DA,” So said.

Without the IFM, So said, the antismuggling drive would be “like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

He said at least 1,000 container vans enter the country every day and an average of 55 vans contain imported pork and chicken.

“It would be a waste of time if we inspect 1,000 container vans when we only need to do it on 55 vans,” he said. Yolanda Sotelo, Inquirer Northern Luzon