The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development is proposing to ban importing old animals and animal organs to tighten management and improve the quality of Vietnam’s meat industry.

Animal organs are popular foods in Vietnam

The ministry and the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry jointly held a meeting to gather opinions about the new Husbandry Law on December 7 in HCM City.

Nguyen Van Ngoc, vice head of the Animal Husbandry Association in south-eastern Vietnam, supported the ban on imported animal organs, saying that exported products must meet difficult requirements while Vietnam is far too lax on the meat it imports.

"Why must domestically-made products have traceable origins while imported products don't have to follow the regulations in HCM City? In other countries, frozen products have a six-month expiry while rules about labels and origins in Vietnam are lax. We need some kind of mechanism to hold foreign slaughterhouses responsible for their imported products," he said.

According to Hoang Thanh Van, director of the Department of Livestock Production, there are many problems in the management of livestock.

He proposed to tighten management over imported agriculture products including issuing bans on importing animal organs, and old and culled poultry. In the past years, old cows and culled chickens as well as a large amount of cheap pig and chicken offal have been imported and sold at restaurants. Not only such products have low quality, but they may also carry toxic substances.

He went on to say that the new law will help reform the administrative system and meet requirements for global integration.

Dtinews/NLD