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Domestic breeders incurring losses because of meat imports
Breeders complain that they are incurring losses, while feed producers say their sales are decreasing because of massive imports of low-quality meat.
Breeders: People are eating dirty chicken
Le Van Thanh, Director of Thai Duong Company, a feed producer, said that the live pork price in the north has dropped from 26-28,000 dong per kilo to 20,000 dong.
“All domestic breeders are incurring losses,” Thanh affirmed, adding that the production cost of one kilogramme of live pork is 31-32,000 dong. Thanh is also the owner of a livestock farm with 60,000 pigs, one of the biggest farms in the north.
Thanh related that two months ago, he was told that 34,000 tonnes of meat were imported to Vietnam and being kept at Hai Phong port, waiting to be re-exported. However, as the H1N1 flu pandemic broke out, the importing countries refused to import the meat. As a result, the Vietnamese importers have been trying to sell the meat in the domestic market, thus forcing domestic prices down.
“The imported meat is still at the ports. If government agencies fail to keep strict control over the imports, they will reach the domestic market and kill domestic breeders,” Thanh said.
Meanwhile, breeders say that consumers should feel concerned if they purchase meat at low prices.
Bui Van Huyen, Director of Viet Tin Feed Company, who is also the owner of the farm with 10,000 pigs and fowls, said that a lot of imported products cannot meet standards for quality.
“With the eyes of experts, we know that a lot of chicken imports now available at supermarkets are just refuse from foreign countries, and should be used as animal feed only,” Huyen affirmed.
Explaining this, Huyen said that these are fowls which cannot lay eggs anymore. These fowls have been injected with many antibiotics. In other countries, after the fowls are exploited, they are ground up to become animal feed, while they are not fit for human consumption.
Importers justifying themselves
Over the last month, government agencies in HCM City and Binh Duong have discovered a lot of cases in which expired meat was imported and sold in the domestic market. The information has irritated the public. However, importers still have been claiming innocence.
Representative from Vissan, a big meat processor and provider, said that Vietnamese consumers purchase unsafe meat at traditional markets and eat bacteria-contaminated meals at restaurants every day. Meanwhile, imported meat, if contaminated with bacteria, is irradiated before it is sold in the market. The representative said that this method is used by many countries in the world.
Tran Dinh Quoc Huong, representative of Vinafood, the enterprise which has been forced to destroy many tonnes of meat it imported because the imports could not meet safety standards, tried to say that Vinafood imported the meat from the US, and that under the US laws, it is not necessary to show an expiration date on the pack if the meat is preserved at minus 18-20oC.
However, Nguyen Xuan Binh, Deputy Director of the Veterinary Centre No VI did not agree, saying that importer must ask the foreign partner to have a sub-label with an expiration date. Binh said that even if the meat is not contaminated with bacteria, it will decline in quality after the expiration date.
vietnamnet, sgtt
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