The director of food importer, ISS Import Trading, has received a suspended 16 month prison sentence for knowingly importing prohibited meat from South East Asia.
The director of ISS, Kevin Yi, admitted to intentionally mis-declaring meat products as ‘vegetables’ when bringing in high risk animal products from South Korea.
Meat and animal products from South Korea are not allowed to be imported into Australia, and the Department of Agriculture's First Assistant Secretary of Compliance, Raelene Vivian, said this was because they are considered to pose too high a risk, due to a range of animal disease concerns such as foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) and avian influenza.
“Research by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES), indicates the cost of an FMD outbreak in Australia would be more than $52 billion to our economy over the course of 10 years.
“Evidence also shows the most probable cause of FMD outbreaks across the world are through illegally imported meat or meat products being fed to pigs,” she said.
