The establishment of quarantine facilities at all major ports of entry in the country should be the first step in waging President Marcos’s all-out war against agricultural smuggling, stakeholders in the private and public sectors alike said on Sunday.
In an interview, Agriculture Undersecretary for Livestock Deogracias Victor Savellano said that while the construction of the first Cold Examination Facility in Agriculture (CEFA) in Angat, Bulacan is a groundbreaking development in efforts to block the entry of smuggled agricultural products, such facilities should be replicated nationwide to be truly effective.
He noted that the Department of Agriculture targets to build similar inspection stations in the ports at the Manila International Container Port (MICP), Subic Bay, Cebu and Davao.
“This [more quarantine facilities] will enable the government to really screen what is coming in [from overseas]. We need them in every major port of entry, not just in one or two, in order to deal a telling blow on smuggling,” he said in a mixture of Filipino and English.
Savellano said his agency anticipates that bidding for the construction of such facilities to commence in about six months.
For his part, Jose Elias Inciong, chairman of the United Broiler and Raisers’ Association (UBRA), welcomed the importance of the Marcos Administration’s renewed emphasis on curbing agricultural smuggling, saying the illegal importation of agricultural goods has been suffocating local food producers for years.
He explained that while outright smuggling of food has been particularly destructive to domestic growers, technical smuggling, or the imposition of extremely low tariffs, has been just as detrimental to the local growers.
Inciong said that aside from potentially putting a stop to smuggling, the envisioned CEFA inspection cites will also help keep out animal and plant diseases.
UBRA’s chair said that it was due to the lack of effective quarantine facilities that local piggeries are still plagued by African Swine Fever (ASF).
“Let’s not forget that the lack of CEFA stations is what allowed ASF to enter the country in the first place. The disease has decimated up to 50 percent of the hog raisers sector, and we are still contending with it to this day,” he added.
