MANILA, Philippines—Close to six million kilos of meat of questionable quality “or worse, expired” might have entered the country without going through food safety inspections, the Samahang Industriya ng Agrikultura (Sinag) said on Tuesday.
The umbrella group of agri-business operators, farmers and party-list groups cited data from the Bureau of Customs, which showed that the agency released 121.6 million kilos of imported pig meat during the first semester of 2014.
Sinag said that, on the other hand, the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) recorded only 116 million kilos passing through quarantine inspection, leaving 5.6 million kilos unaccounted for.
Vicente Mercado, chair of the Sinag member-group National Federation of Hog Farmers Inc. (NFHFI), said Sinag’s discovery came amid claims by certain meat importers that it would be alright to eat expired meat if these were frozen.
“No country allows the resale of frozen meat as chilled and no country should ever allow thawed frozen meat to be passed off and sold as fresh meat,” Mercado said.
Sinag chair Rosendo So said “such a practice poses a grave threat to our public health security.”
“Besides, the volume that we discovered represents only those that were documented,” he said in a phone interview. “How much more undocumented meat is circulating in our markets?”
He added that some importers have been buying meat stocks near the expiration date to be able to get them at rock bottom prices. Thus, the tendency is to circumvent regulators’ inspection.
So said such a misplaced mindset of some has been alarming, especially in view of the recent “expired meat” scandal in China, where a local company was found to have been supplying expired meat to popular fast-food chains like McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut and even Starbucks.
“We’re calling on Agriculture Secretary Proseso Alcala and Customs Commissioner John Philip Sevilla to immediately investigate this matter,” said So.
“Why is Customs releasing imported meat without quarantine clearance and why is there no quarantine officer to check on the imported meat?” he said.
In a separate interview, Alcala said he has been informed of the matter and has initiated an investigation.
“We will have that checked,” he said. “I have been vocal about the importance of food safety and this is something that we cannot tolerate.”
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