Officials suspect boar meat was dumped by suppliers

JAKARTA (JP): Officials from the City Animal Husbandry Agency said on Tuesday they suspected the nearly one ton of wild boar meat found in a sewer in Kemayoran, Central Jakarta, on Sunday was dumped by distributors following a significant drop in demand for the meat.

Agency head Edi Setiarto and senior staffer Raidjin Arsyad said the illegal distributors, who obtained the boar meat from Bengkulu, Sumatra, failed to find vendors willing to purchase the meat following news reports about the sale of beef mixed with boar meat in markets across the capital.

They said that as a result of the media coverage, the distributors decided to dump the meat, which was discovered by a Kemayoran resident on Sunday morning.

"Since the stock of boar meat has been getting larger and larger and the suppliers still couldn't find any traders to resell the meat, they simply dumped it," Edi said.

Bengkulu has become a popular spot for hunters, with wild boars their favorite targets. The discovery of the discarded boar meat in Kemayoran has worried many people, particularly Muslims, because it was reported several days earlier that some vendors in the capital were mixing beef with boar meat and selling it at relatively cheap prices.

According to Raidjin, the illegal distributors, believed to be from Bengkulu, are suspected to have sold the meat in Jelambar market in West Jakarta.

"The stock usually arrived between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. by pickup trucks at Jelambar before being distributed later in the Grogol and Senen markets," he said.

Based on his team's preliminary investigation, Raidjin said vendors in the three markets no longer wanted to purchase the boar meat.

"The situation apparently forced these illegal suppliers to abandon their stock," he added.

Each delivery, usually made twice of three times a week, could supply the capital with some one to 1.5 tons of wild boar meat.

The findings were based in part on the confessions of several meat vendors in Tebet, South Jakarta, who were arrested late last month for selling 740 kilograms of wild boar meat.

During the interrogation, the vendors said they treated the boar meat in an attempt to fool customers who thought they were purchasing beef, which has a reddish color and less fat than the boar meat.

"The meat was initially soaked in vanilla and calamondin to eliminate the odor of the wild boars, and later dipped into a pool of cow's blood," Joko Wijayanto, one of the vendors, was quoted by Raidjin as saying.

He said the boar meat was then sold for Rp 14,000 per kilogram, much cheaper than the Rp 26,000 per kilogram charged for real beef.

"Buyers would realize they had been tricked once they cooked the wild boar meat, which released its original smell," said Raidjin.

The official quoted the suspects as saying the fake beef was sold in numerous markets across the capital, including Pasar Minggu, Kebayoran Lama and Ciputat, all in South Jakarta, Tanjung Priok in North Jakarta, and Cikokol, Pamulang, Ciputat and Pasar Kemis in Tangerang.

He said he had purchased some of the fake beef in Pasar Minggu, which led him to investigate the source of the cheap meat.

According to Edi, his office would destroy the boar meat confiscated from the traders and found in Kemayoran when the police no longer needed it for their investigation.

Separately, the secretary of the Jakarta chapter of the Indonesian Ulemas Council, Hamdan Rasyid, said Kelingkit residents informed his office the police in Tebet had freed one of the vendors of the boar meat in return for a Rp 5 million bribe.

"I received the report three days ago from residents of Kelingkit," Hamdan said.

When asked for confirmation, Tebet Police chief of detectives First Insp. Supangat dismissed the allegation, saying the City Animal Husbandry Agency had not involved Tebet Police officers in its operation.

"I know nothing about the agency's raid and we never arrested any wild boar vendors," he said. (lup/07)