Who’s Eating All That Meat?
Feeding Belize’s soldiers came with a hefty price tag, and a closer look at the bills is raising eyebrows. Leaked tender documents show that a handful of suppliers secured some of the biggest contracts to stock the Belize Defense Force’s kitchens during the 2023-2024 fiscal year, collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars for meat, seafood, and other food products. But were taxpayers getting their money’s worth?
As more questions are being asked about Defense Ministry spending, the records reveal purchases made at prices that, in some instances, appear well above national averages.
Cabinet Minister Kareem Musa says the pricing discrepancies go to the heart of the ongoing investigation. “So if the Miras are offering the same vegetables at a lower cost than say, Save U and or Brodies, then we should go the Miras, but at the end of the day it should be published for transparency purposes,” Musa said.
The Statistical Institute of Belize (SIB) publishes monthly data on the average cost of household goods and services nationwide. The SIB gives a benchmark against which government purchases can be measured. In June, Jacqueline Sabal, Manager of the Economic Statistics Department at SIB, told us, “We do the consumer price index survey every month and we collect prices across the country.”
Comparing SIB’s price data for 2023 and 2024 against what the Ministry of Defense actually paid reveals a gap that’s hard to ignore. According to SIB, the highest average price for a pound of chicken breast between 2023 and 2024 was $4.73, recorded in April 2024. But leaked tender documents show the Ministry of Defense paid $7.76 per pound for chicken breast from supplier J&J Imports, roughly $3 more per pound than the highest national average recorded during that period.
At that rate, the ministry spent $7,760 a month, or over $93,000 a year, on chicken breast from J&J Imports alone. Had the ministry paid closer to $5 a pound, it could have saved an estimated $33,000 annually on that item alone.
A second supplier, Kukulcan, charged $5.50 per pound for chicken breast over the same period, closer to the national average but still above it. The ministry’s monthly spend with Kukulcan for chicken breast came to $4,801.50. Combined, the ministry’s chicken breast purchases from both suppliers cost more than $150,000 over the year.
Fish fillet was another significant expense. Kukulcan billed the ministry $23 a pound for fish fillet, totaling $23,000 a month, or $276,000 a year. J&J Imports charged a lower rate, $20.71 a pound, costing just over $30,000 monthly.
Premium items pushed costs higher still. Lobster purchases from J&J Imports came to $24,402 for the year. Shrimp was a bigger expense: combined purchases from Kukulcan and J&J Imports totaled $177,420 annually.
Baby back ribs cost the ministry $19,260 over the year, priced between $14 and $15 a pound. Ground steak, supplied by Kukulcan, J&J Imports, and a smaller vendor, added another $157,500 in annual spending.
Tallying just six line items, chicken breast, whole chicken, fish fillet, lobster, shrimp, ribs, and ground steak, the ministry’s spending totals close to $600,000 for the year. That figure does not include additional spending on beef steak and ground chicken purchased during the same period, meaning the ministry’s total food expenditure was likely significantly higher.
The scale and pricing of these purchases raise a central question: did the Ministry of Defense get value for taxpayers’ money, or did it pay a premium, item after item, to keep the BDF supplied?