Cambodia bans Vietnamese pig imports

The provincial governor of Svay Rieng province, Cambodia, has banned all imports of pork and live pigs from Vietnam, fearing diseases outbreaks that could severely damage the local pig industry through contamination.

Svay Rieng provincial governor Chheang Am issued a statement on May 4 instructing all relevant authorities, including those operating border checkpoints, to "immediately cease all imports of pork and live pigs" from Vietnam, in order to prevent a potential "epidemic" of various diseases.

"Agriculture officials reported that there are pig diseases occurring in neighbouring countries, so the authority decided to ban their pigs until the situation is better," he said, and added that outbreaks of two diseases -  foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) and porcine respiratory and reproductive syndrome (PRRD) – had recently been detected in Vietnam.

Sek Vanny, deputy director of the Drug and Food Office at the Svay Rieng Health Department, said the ban had been imposed in part because Vietnamese pig-raisers had been deliberately and illegally dumping diseased pigs on the Cambodian market at cheap prices to get rid of the animals.

Vanny added that, because the diseased Vietnamese pigs are relatively cheap, Cambodian villagers would continue to buy them unless all corridors through which they are illegally imported were blocked.

Nguyen Chi Dzung, a counsellor from the Vietnamese embassy in Phnom Penh, said Thursday (May 13) that he had heard no information of any disease outbreak in Tay Ninh, the Vietnamese province that borders Svay Rieng, but confirmed that such outbreaks had occurred in the past.

This is not the first time disease-ridden pigs from neighbouring countries have allegedly been dumped on the Cambodian market, according to Curtis Hundley, chief of party at the USAID's Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) economic development project, which helps develop local agriculture.

Previously, the 2007 outbreak occurred in Vietnam and Thailand, countries that export major quantities of pigs into Cambodia, and prompted Prime Minister Hun Sen to ban all imports of pigs from both countries for a period of eight months.

Srun Pov, the deputy president of the association, said that about 600 Vietnamese pigs, many of them carrying diseases, were being illegally smuggled into Cambodia every day, and called for a nationwide ban.