Abattoirs mostly small According to international standards, chilled meat has to be preserved at no more than seven degrees Celsius immediately after slaughter. In Vietnam, fresh meat is put on the market right after slaughtering, saving cold storage costs but raising hygiene and safety concerns. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) estimates that up to 90 percent of pork sold on the domestic market is warm pork. The newly issued standards include requirements for raw materials and technical requirements at each stage of production, storage and distribution to ensure the quality of the chilled meat. The standards stipulate labeling to distinguish between fresh meat and chilled meat. Those standards will help improve transparency in management and also provide a legal framework for companies producing and trading in these products. According to Dam Xuan Thanh, Deputy Director of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development’s Department of Animal Health, 52 of 63 provinces and cities nationwide have approved plans to develop slaughtering facilities. These include 11 localities in the Red River Delta. However, the region has 12,400 small-sized abattoirs, while major slaughtering facilities mostly operate below capacity and cannot compete with small abattoirs. The situation is similar in the southeastern region, where there are 307 large and small abattoirs. Major slaughtering facilities in this region do not operate at full capacity, either. A representative of the An Viet Production and Services Trading Joint Stock Company in Hanoi said that although the company had invested tens of billions of dong… [Read full story]
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