Pork pies?

re: "Vendors urge pork imports to curb soaring price" (BP, January 10, 2022)

Dear editor,

I don't understand how the government importing pork can reduce prices. If imported pork is cheaper than domestic pork, why isn't it already being bought in preference to the local product? Surely some wily business people would already be taking the profits to be had were such the case.

If imported pork is as expensive as or more expensive than domestic pork, how is importing more going to reduce the price? Are the importers going to sell at a loss? Is the unsavoury reality that another costly government subsidy scheme is being touted? Or are the principles of market economics now going the way, so redolent of the Chinese communist way, of openness, transparency and accountability?

It is, one must joyously concede, encouraging to have it again confirmed and insisted on regarding the rumours of African swine fever's prevalence consistent with the findings of Kasetsart University's associate dean at the university's Faculty of Veterinary Medicine according to "Pet pig's death prompts African swine fever probe" (Bangkok Post, Jan. 9), that Thai government authorities "would never hide an outbreak from the rest of the world," let alone, one assumes, from the Thai people: a clear win for the good public morals of openness, transparency, and accountability.
 
 Felix Qui

 

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on January 11, 2022, under the title "Pork pies?" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2245455/pork-pies-