Officials at Thailand’s Customs and Livestock Development departments recently deployed trained sniffer dogs to the Chong Mek border checkpoint in Sirindhorn district of the northeastern province of Ubon Ratchathani, to check all cargo trucks coming from the Lao PDR to prevent smuggling, especially of pork, amid the current high price crisis and ongoing swine outbreak.
Officials said, however, that no smuggled pork has been found so far, adding that smuggling of meat from the Lao PDR would be challenging because the country has very few large refrigerated trucks.
Meanwhile, officials of Warin Chamrap district are investigating the source of about 300kgs of pork, which were found at a garbage dump site near the Moon River yesterday.
They initially suspected that the pork might have been dumped there by a pork trader in the district, who might have hoarded an excessive amount of the meat in his cold storage facility, to evade sanction by authorities from the Livestock Development Department.
The abandoned pork was later buried to prevent the possible spread of disease.
Regarding the 24 tonnes of smuggled pork seized in Mukdahan province late last month, it is still unknown whether the pork was infected, although it has already been destroyed by Thai officials.
