In Vietnam, qualified slaughterhouses hurt by illegal competitors
In Vietnam, qualified slaughterhouses hurt by illegal competitors
Illegal slaughterhouses are taking a toll on the licensed, qualified facilities in the southern Vietnamese province of Dong Nai by offering much cheaper prices, despite their openly flouting safety and hygiene regulations.
Consumers in Vietnam may lose sleep over the pork they eat every day if they know how pigs are slaughtered at illegal facilities which are omnipresent in Dong Nai, where Ho Chi Minh City sources pork and poultry.
At such unlicensed slaughterhouses, swine are killed and butchered right on the dirty floor by topless men who tend to use their bare hands to turn the animals around and 'wash' them with their bare feet.
An illegal facility can slaughter up to 60 pigs per night and the pork, with no safety and hygiene certificate, will be distributed to downtown Dong Nai and Ho Chi Minh City, where they will go directly to markets or the kitchens of industrial parks, schools or eateries.
Tran Van Quang, head of the Dong Nai Animal Health Agency, admitted that there are more than 60 illegal slaughterhouses in the province.
These facilities are operating with impunity, leaving those with a safe and hygienic slaughtering process in dire shortage of pigs to maintain operations.
Nguyen Quang Tho, the owner of the Thy Tho slaughterhouse in Long Khanh Town, said his business has been hurt by illegal competitors over the last two years.
The facility has never received enough pigs to run at full swing since it was upgraded following a huge investment in 2012, Tho said.
In 2012, Dong Nai was selected among 12 Vietnamese provinces for the Livestock Competitiveness and Food Safety Project (LIFSAP), a World Bank-backed program meant to promote “clean livestock from farm to table.”
Run from 2010 to 2015, the LIFSAP pledges to help local authorities to wipe out unlicensed, unhygienic slaughterhouses and provide legal facilities with US$30,000 each to use safe and clean technology and equipment, and to meet hygiene standards.
The administration of the selected localities has to be committed to cracking down on all of the local illegal facilities to create conditions for the LIFSAP-backed slaughterhouses to operate.
Tho, who was then running a small slaughterhouse, was encouraged by the local administration to join the program, and he earmarked more than VND5 billion ($223,214) from his own pocket for expanding and upgrading his facility.
The modernized slaughterhouse, capable of processing 250 pigs per day, started operating in 2013 but could only receive 70 animals per day at most, Tho said.
“There are still many illegal slaughterhouses in Long Khanh and farmers prefer using the service there,” he said.
“As the owners of such unlicensed facilities do not have to incur the huge cost to buy modern equipment and to meet hygiene standards, they can undercut my price by up to VND20,000 [$0.89] a pig.”
Tho said he is waiting for local authorities to crack down on the illegal abattoirs as what they had promised when participating in the LIFSAP.
Khang Thuy, a slaughterhouse in Cam My District, also suffers the same hardship as most pigs in the area are sent to illegal facilities.
In April 2014, the Dong Nai Food Industry Corporation (DOFICO) had to shut down its D&F Factory as it failed to compete with illegal abattoirs.
The company had invested VND70 billion ($3.13 million) in the facility, which used European technology and was capable of slaughtering as many as 100 pigs per hour.
The shutdown led to the lay-off of 70 employees as well.
