Personnel of the Bureau of Animal Industry Veterinary Quarantine Services Office (BAI-VQSO) and Cebu Province’s African Swine Fever (ASF) Task Force confiscate P200,000 worth of canned luncheon meat on Tuesday, September 3, in Cebu City’s Pier 1. PHOTO BY Capitol PIO/Tonee Despojo
CEBU CITY, Philippines — About P200,000 worth of China-made luncheon meat were intercepted by personnel of the Bureau of Animal Industry Veterinary Quarantine Services Office (BAI-VQSO) and Cebu Province’s African Swine Fever (ASF) Task Force on Tuesday, September 3, in Cebu City’s Pier 1.
The confiscated items include 2,038 cans of 397-gram luncheon meat, 246 cans of 340-gram meat product, and 966 cans of 170-gram luncheon meat.
Provincial Veterinarian Dr. Mary Rose Vincoy, chief of the ASF Task Force, said they received an information at noon on September 3 about the shipment of the banned pork products to Cebu.
BAI-VQSO intercepted the items while they were being unloaded from the vessel about 12:45 p.m.
Pork products from 20 countries, including China, which have reported cases of ASF have been banned by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Governor Gwendolyn Garcia also issued a 100-day ban on the entry of pork and pork products from other provinces as an additional measure to protect the province’s P10-billion hog industry.
The shipment came from Bohol and was supposed to be delivered to EAL Development Group, Inc., a distributor of canned goods with a warehouse located in Barangay Tingub, Mandaue City.
These China-made luncheon meat was confiscated by Bureau of Animal Industry Veterinary Quarantine Services Office (BAI-VQSO) and Cebu Province’s African Swine Fever (ASF) Task Force on Tuesday, September 3. PHOTO BY Capitol PIO/Tonee Despojo
A representative of EAL, who requested anonymity, said they pulled out the products from their partner stores in Bohol since the goods cannot be sold because of the ban.
“It was in good faith on our part that we decided to pull them out to supposedly destroy them,” the representative said.
The confiscated canned goods were brought to the Capitol ‘s central warehouse on M.Velez Street pending the schedule of its thermal destruction.
Vincoy said they are in talks with a third party provider for the destruction of the confiscated items. / celr