FAMILY households have been advised to buy frozen meat only from supermarkets because these have expiry dates.

“If they buy meat in public markets, they should ensure these are fresh, not defrosted,” Engr. Rosendo So gave the advice during the KBP Forum last Thursday.

So said only 10 containers out of 181 containers of smuggled frozen meat have been disposed of by composting since August to Oct. 11. The remaining containers are scheduled to undergo the same process. These smuggled meats were seized by the Bureau of Customs in 2014.

So, whose group, Samahan ng Industriyang Agrikultura (Sinag), has been actively fighting smuggling of agricultural products. “There are still too many left, still long way to go,” So said.

He said other containers were released surreptitiously from the Customs yard, so only 183 containers could be accounted for in 2015 at a Senate hearing early this year.

He suspects that big amounts of the two-year-old smuggled meats may still find their way to public markets because Sinag discovered some of the smuggled meat that should have been defrosted first were still frozen and placed in plastic bags as these were being brought to the sanitary landfill area in Bulacan.

So said the meat that were released from the Manila International Container Port for disposal were supposed to be defrosted to ensure they would not be sold in the market.

“When these were brought for disposal in a sanitary landfill in Bulacan, they were not defrosted,” he said.

Meanwhile, his group has suggested that that the decomposed meat be converted into organic fertilizer to be given to farmers, he said. But to do it, he said, there should be representatives from the Department of Health and Department of Environment and Natural Resources to ensure the fertilizer from these decomposed meats are free from virus.

The seized smuggled frozen meat came from USA, Canada and Europe. (Tita Roces)

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