October 8, 2012
Vietnam receives poor quality chickens from South Korea
Businesses in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, have received poor quality chicken imports from South Korea.
The chicken is usually used for animal feed processing, so lacks any nutritional value. However, in some markets and supermarkets in the city, this product is sold at high prices compared to domestic chicken.
A staff member at a supermarket on Hoang Van Thu Street, Tan Binh District, said her supermarket deliberately up-sold South Korean chicken.
Coming to another nearby counter the seller said, "All the fried chicken here is from South Korea."
A South Korea fried chicken is sold at US$2.90 at supermarkets. Most of the chicken sold in the city does not have any clear point of origin.
This kind of chicken is also massively sold at local markets like Pham Van Hai in Tan Binh District and Ba Chieu in Binh Thanh District.
In reality, for years, Vietnam has imported poor-quality foreign food products such as pig viscera and chicken necks, legs and wings and recently South Korean-imported chicken. These products are often used for animal feed processing in abroad.
Poor-quality chickens have been imported into Vietnam as local people prefer stronger chicken than industrially raised domestically produced varieties.
Nguyen Thanh Son, Deputy Head of the Husbandry Department under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, said such chickens have been imported from South Korea legally.
He added that, South Korean chickens have come to Vietnam since late August; however, no specific statistics had been released to date.
According to the department, illegally-imported chickens and poor-quality poultry pose a threat to the domestic husbandry industry.
Diep Kinh Tan, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development said "Companies massively imported meat and viscera, however, after technical requirements were set for protein content and nutrition, these imports sharply declined."
He said that the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development would instruct agencies to draft technical standards for imported chickens and also control imports from South Korea.
