If we can trust the bureaucracy, pigs might fly

Soaring pork prices are another indicator of a sinking bureaucracy, a system that’s both inefficient and increasingly becoming untrustworthy. Pork prices have risen since the end of 2021 but it was only last week that speculation emerged that an outbreak of African swine fever (ASF) had contributed to it.

The issue is that the Department of Livestock, which is supposed to know about the viral disease and control a spread should it occur, has repeatedly denied that ASF has spread.

The authorities had already attributed a number of farm pig deaths — believed to have caused a decline in live pig supplies and thus the pork price surge — to another viral disease called porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS).

However, several farmers (already battling high feed costs) have claimed the deaths were due to an ASF outbreak which decimated the number of live pigs and forced many smallscale farms to go out of business.

Even more disconcerting is a circulation of a copy of a letter from the Thailand Veterinary Dean Consortium (TVDC) urging the livestock department to consider implementing strict disease control measures after a lab test confirmed that ASF was found in a pig carcass.

According to the letter, the result of the lab test confirming the presence of ASF had been sent to the livestock department.

And the letter was dated Dec 7, more than a month ago.

Faced with the information, Sorawit Thanito, director-general of the Department of Livestock Development, said he hadn’t seen the letter, according to a report on ThaiPBS.

Government spokesman Thanakorn Wangboonkongchana also insisted on Sunday that the government did not try to cover up an ASF outbreak in the country.

So who can we trust?

According to news reports, the number of live pigs the country produced went down from about 19 million last year to just 13 million this year.

To whom did the missing six million pigs belong to? Small farmers or big agribusinesses?

But the signs of ASF being a threat have been around for long enough to be taken seriously. Last May, Vietnam suspended a shipment of live pigs from Thailand, saying it detected ASF in them. In late December, sausages from Thailand were confirmed by Taiwan authorities to have been infected with the ASF virus.

Even though the livestock department said it was not aware of the missive sent by the dean consortium — that indicated that large numbers of pig deaths had been going on for some time in many provinces — should it at least have heard about and become more alert about the disease?

For now, the livestock chief said he will set up a committee to probe whether there is really a spread of the disease. He will also set up special task forces to inspect pig farms in four central provinces to check on the virus as well as to monitor live pigs as well as pork production.

The response is the usual reaction from bureaucratic authorities and it appears too little too late if six million live pigs have already disappeared from the system.

The question that needs to be asked of the livestock department is why it did not pay more attention to a possible spread of ASF despite the growing evidence.

The bureaucracy is naturally the support base for conservative leaders. It is even more so for the Prayut Chan-o-cha government which has highlighted the system as one of its hallmarks, a sign of order and stability.

Soaring pork prices, and stories about why it is occurring, has reaffirmed the perception that the Thai bureaucracy is too slow and inept to solve either deep-seated problems or new, increasingly complex ones.

Or even worse — that in some cases, it cannot be trusted. And such distrust is eroding its standing and relevancy.

Why was there an uproar over the Revenue Department’s plan to impose a 15% capital gains tax on cryptocurrency traders? People are also asking why the government should impose a tax on nonfungible tokens when it has contributed nothing to developing the market.

Meanwhile, winter arrived and people continue to choke under seasonal PM 2.5 pollution. A condo security guard booked for raping a tenant was found to have been given a licence even though he had been imprisoned for sexually harassing a minor. And why do stories about privileged people getting away with murder never disappear from society?

The problem is not just that pork prices are soaring. The problem is how are we supposed to tackle any problem old or new if the government continues to place its trust in the ever so crumbling bureaucracy?