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At the yesterday's meeting chaired by Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Minh Hoan |
After the SGGP Newspaper and several press agencies published articles about the imports of poultry meat, foreign meat products and animal organs into the country, plus live chickens from Thailand to the South and Central of Vietnam leading to a sharp drop in domestic pork and chicken prices, and farmers at risk of bankruptcy, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Minh Hoan yesterday chaired a meeting with functional units and press agencies to clarify related issues in Hanoi.
Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Minh Hoan said that the market and prices are always unstable because of the fluctuation of the market mechanism where the forces of demand and supply determine the price and quantity of goods and services traded.
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Owners of poultry farms face difficulties because of cheap imported poultry meat |
At the meeting, Deputy Director of the Department of Animal Health under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development Nguyen Thu Thuy, reported that from the beginning of the year until now, only about 4,000 tons of chicken feet and more than 400 tons of chickens and ducks have been imported.
However, according to the Vietnam Poultry Association (VIPA)’s recent dispatch to the Prime Minister, VIPA announced that large quantities of livestock by-products with very cheap prices such as legs, heads, necks, and wings, especially frozen discarded egg-laying hens without heads, legs and offal are smuggled into the country in the past time.
According to VIPA’s official dispatch, every month, tens of thousands of tons of live discarded egg-laying hens are smuggled across the border into the country, seriously affecting the domestic poultry industry.
Statistics from the General Department of Customs showed that the import of chickens increased during the past five years and accounted for 20-25 percent of the total consumption of chicken meat in the domestic market.
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Director of the Ministry's Department of Livestock Production Duong Tat Thang speaks at the meeting |
VIPA urged the Government to promptly ban the import of meat products from countries that had not banned the use of animal feed additives Ractopamine and Cysteamine and to tighten the import of by-products to protect consumers.
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| Deputy Director of the Department of Animal Health Nguyen Thu Thuy speaks at the meeting |
Talking about the imports of substandard live hens and poultry meat into Vietnam, Deputy Director of the Department of Animal Health Nguyen Thu Thuy affirmed that any country which wants to sell meat products or by-products on the Vietnamese market must negotiate with the host country in four or five years and comply with the requirements of the Ministry of Health.
She explained that because Vietnam is a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the negotiation must follow the principle of non-discrimination of any product when imported into Vietnam.
The Department of Animal Health reviews the records of the disease as well as the food safety monitoring process in the importing country. Therefore, it can’t say that substandard imported products into Vietnam, a representative of the Department of Animal Health said.
After receiving the official dispatch of the Vietnam Poultry Breeding Association, recently, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh directly signed Official Dispatch No. 426/CD-TTg dated May 18, asking relevant ministries to prevent, detect and strictly handle cases of illegal trading and transportation of poultry and poultry products across the border into Vietnam.
