Quarantine authorities have seized processed pork from a passenger on board a flight from Manila, which arrived around noontime Tuesday at the Sibulan-Dumaguete airport in Negros Oriental.
Dr. Alfonso Tundag, quarantine officer of the Bureau of Animal Industry in the province, said the confiscated frozen products consisted of three packs of siomai (dumplings) weighing some 1.5 kilograms.
Veterinary quarantine officer Joseph Orellano intercepted the processed pork products and disposed of these by disinfecting and burying.
There was no resistance from the passenger who carried it on board a Cebu Pacific flight, after that person was informed of the ban on entry of these products due to the African Swine Fever scare, Tundag said.
This is not the first time this year that quarantine officers have intercepted “hot meat” or unauthorized meat and its by-products.
Tundag said that just last week, they intercepted 12 tons (or about 11,000 kilos) of frozen raw beef from Cavite, which was transported via a ferry to Dumaguete.
The raw beef was offloaded last Jan. 28 at the city port and brought to the Polar Bear cold storage in nearby Sibulan town.
However, upon inspection by the National Meat Inspection Service at the said facility, the raw beef shipment lacked pertinent papers.
Warren Cadeliña of the NMIS in Region 7 and assigned in Negros Oriental discovered upon inspection that the shipment that did not have a proper certification of “none co-mingling with pork products”, Tundag said.
“Even though the shipment is raw beef, without such certificate, there is no assurance that this has not been stored in the same facility with raw pork,” Tundag said in the Cebuano dialect.
He explained co-mingling with pork in the same cold storage poses a risk of contamination of the raw beef.
They ordered the beef to be brought back to Manila and to its origin the day after it arrived here. (Judy F. Partlow/PNA)