Officials from Thailand’s Livestock Development Department have impounded about 6.6 tonnes of undeclared frozen pork, which was found in two cold storage facilities in Nakhon Pathom province yesterday (Saturday), as part of escalated efforts to crack down on hoarding of pork for profiteering.
The department’s director-general Sorravis Thaneto, said that livestock officials raided the two storage facilities to check their frozen pork stocks.
At one facility, inventory documentation showed 288,828.6kgs of frozen pork were being stored by the facility’s owner, but 56,898kgs were being kept at another facility and their movement had not been reported to the Internal Trade Department, as legally required.
At another facility, 56,388kgs of frozen pork were found, including about 10,000kgs the movement of which had not been officially declared.
According to the Central Committee on Prices of Goods and Services, possession of more than 5,000kgs of pork must be declared to the authorities.
In the north-eastern province of Mukdahan yesterday (Saturday), livestock officials stopped a trailer truck, arriving from the Savannakhet province of the Lao PDR, at a border checkpoint and found it contained an estimated 20 tonnes of frozen pork, worth about five million baht.
The driver of the truck, Srisuwan Klangpraphan, told livestock officials that he didn’t know the truck was carrying the meat, saying that he had driven another trailer truck to Savannakhet to deliver “snackers” to a customer.
On the return trip to Thailand, he was told by a man at truck terminal to drive a different trailer truck and, after passing through the checkpoint in Mukdahan province, he would receive a call from someone who would advise him where to deliver the cargo in the container.
Bringing animal carcass into the country without a permit is an offence, liable to two years in prison and/or a fine of 200,000 baht on conviction, according to the Animal Epidemic Act.
