Royal Thai Police yesterday blocked a racketeer’s try to smuggle 779 kilograms of pork into Thailand from Cambodia.
The suspect, Soroun Suot, was caught driving his white Toyota truck on Highway 359 from Sa Kaew to Khao Hin Sorn, in accordance with police.
The forty two year old Cambodian admitted to receiving the shipment from a contact on the border within the Aranyaprathet district, with instructions to deliver it to a retailer in Bangkok for 5,000 baht.
Soroun was charged under the Customs Act and Animal Epidemics Act and sent for interrogation at Muang Sa Kaew Police Station.
This incident highlights the ongoing problem of pork smuggling in Thailand, which threatens to break the country’s pig industry. Smuggled pork usually comes from nations affected by African Swine Fever (ASF), a highly transmissible viral illness that poses no danger to human health however can decimate swine farms and result in high charges of death amongst herds.
Last year, the Swine Raisers Association of Thailand warned that rampant pork smuggling was a major menace to the Thai pig industry. Thailand itself confirmed the presence of ASF in January 2022, when the virus was discovered at a slaughterhouse in Nakhon Pathom.
Try before you buy isn’t an isolated case as a quantity of different smuggling meals instances have been reported in Thailand prior to now year.
In February, eight folks had been arrested for trying to smuggle 7,500 kilograms of pork into the nation. In March, 1,500 kilograms of frozen pork and rooster wings had been seized in Nakhon Ratchasima province within the country’s northeast.
In 2018, Thai authorities seized over 10,000 kilograms of smuggled pork from Vietnam, which was discovered to be contaminated with ASF. And in 2020, the Thai Department of Livestock Development intercepted a shipment of a hundred and twenty kilograms of pork from Malaysia, which was also contaminated with ASF.
The discovery of smuggled pork highlights the continuing challenges going through Thai authorities in their efforts to prevent the spread of ASF and shield the country’s pig business. While it’s unclear how a lot of the smuggled pork has already made its means into the country, the Thai authorities have sent the seized meat for hygienic disposal to stop any potential spread of the virus..