Exiled former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has claimed that there are 4 or 5 major pork merchants who have cold storage facilities in Thailand, each with the capacity to store up to 400,000 kgs of frozen pork for up to six months, and that they have been hoarding pork for profiteering purposes.
During his talk in the “Care Talk x Care Club House” chat room on Tuesday, Thaksin, alias Tony Woodsome, said that, as there is insufficient pork to meet domestic demand due to the death of many breeder pigs from diseases, there are two things that Thailand or the Thai government can do.
In the short term, allow the import of live pigs from abroad and, as a long-term solution, accelerate the number of breeders. Small and medium sized pig farmers should be compensated for the loss of their pigs due to disease.
He suggested that government officials talk with these merchants and ask them to release their pork stocks, to ease the pork shortage temporarily while imported live pigs are shipped in and piglets mature enough to be slaughtered.
He also recommended that the government try to reduce pig farmers’ production costs and avoid imposing unnecessary taxes, which will increase their production costs.
The former prime minister said that he disagrees with the Commerce Ministry’s to plan to use 1.4 billion baht from the Central Fund to buy chicken, to sell to the public through its retail outlets at discount prices, as an alternative to increasingly expensive pork.
“I feel that it is a waste of money” he concluded.
