I am calling anew the Bureau of Customs and the Department of Agriculture to join forces against the smuggling of agricultural products and put behind bars the smugglers and their protectors in the government.

We need to send a strong signal to the smugglers that we are not soft on them and we are determined to haul them off to jail because under Republic Act 1085, or the anti-agricultural smuggling law in which I am one of the principal authors, large-scale agricultural smuggling is declared as an economic sabotage with a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.