– armed perpetrators escape

ENFORCEMENT officers attached to the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) seized a boatload of smuggled chicken in the wee hours of Saturday in the waterways shared between Annandale/Buxton, East Coast Demerara (ECD).

The Sunday Chronicle understands that the GRA officers acted on information and intercepted the vessel, but they came under gunfire from the perpetrators who eventually escaped, leaving the smuggled meat behind.

Over 6,000 pounds of chicken with the ‘Rockingham’ label was discovered in the speedboat by the GRA officers.
“If this chicken had evaded law enforcement and was dispatched to various sellers and supermarkets later, then the consumers will be placed at a major health risk; these things do not pass through any health inspection before it[sic] is sold,” one GRA officer, who prefers not to be named, told the Sunday Chronicle.

Another law-enforcement officer explained that bacteria via contaminated or spoilt chicken can provoke a number of symptoms within 72 hours of exposure and could last for four to seven days, necessitating hospitalisation in some cases.

Infection with salmonella, he said, could be life-threatening, especially to those with weak immune systems such as infants and the elderly.
Poultry farmers in the past had expressed frustration over smuggling.