Raise awareness of forces fighting livestock and poultry smuggling

Mr. Nguyen Nhu So - Delegate of the 15th National Assembly, Chairman of the Vietnam Feed Association, opened up to Vietnam Agriculture News about his concern about the complicated phenomenon of illegally importing livestock and poultry from abroad into Vietnam over the past many years.

Breed smuggling has been going on for many years

Dear Sir, Recently, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and other agencies, departments, and branches have assessed that trading and transporting smuggled livestock and poultry is complicated throughout the country. So, in your opinion, how does this issue impact the domestic livestock industry?

In reality, the smuggling of livestock and poultry in Vietnam has lasted many years, not just recently. Our peculiarity is that we share borders with China, Laos, and Cambodia, stretching long and wide.

As we have seen in recent years, especially in 2022, epidemics in livestock and poultry have become very complicated. There was a time when we prevented African swine fever very well, but now there is an outbreak in most provinces. Similarly, many new diseases have also appeared in chicken flocks, not to mention foreign virus strains smuggled in from chickens and ducks, combining with domestic virus strains to create new virus strains, reducing the effectiveness of the medicines vaccines to prevent and treat.

Sir, experts say that the poultry breeding technology of China and Vietnam has almost no significant difference in quality or price. So why are chickens and ducks from abroad still rushing into Vietnam at such cheap prices?

Vietnam's poultry breeding capacity is almost similar to that of other countries. I calculated the cost of producing a chicken breed from Vietnam and China nearly the same. However, sometimes, chicken and duck breeds smuggled into Vietnam are cheaper and accepted by some breeders.

In addition, Chinese people's consumption spending has also decreased sharply in recent years. While seed production is a whole process from preparing cages, breeding, raising, and hatching, it is not the case that if the price of seed is high today, you can do it. Tomorrow, when the price drops, then stop. Therefore, sometimes you must sell at a loss or any price to save costs. Those reasons lead to smuggled breeds when the price of domestic chickens and ducks is higher than in neighboring countries.

Stop smuggled cattle and poultry to protect the health of future generations

As you said, several new diseases have appeared in livestock and poultry and have been recorded in Vietnam. Can you say specifically what disease it is?

We are still very concerned about African swine fever. Scientists, experts, and direct breeding units must also take the virus into the field to see if it has mutated. There are also blue ear disease, foot and mouth disease, diarrhea...

Currently, bird flu H5N9 and H5N6 have also appeared and mutated continuously. Faced with the above situation, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the Prime Minister have also recognized and given very drastic instructions to localities.

However, I think the awareness of some people in charge of preventing and combating livestock and poultry smuggling is not very good. Their thinking and thinking are still simple, leading to incomplete task execution. We have many forces working together to control livestock smuggling, from border guards, police, customs, market management, veterinary medicine..., so they all know about the smuggling of livestock and poultry into Vietnam.

The illegal import of live animals and the temporary import and re-export of livestock products also cause disease transmission from abroad into the country.

Unable to prevent smuggled breeds, there is no disease-free livestock farming

Obviously, the authorities also need to better understand the importance of food to human life, thereby being more strict against smuggled products of unknown origin and uncontrolled products and undetermined quality?

As I just shared, ensuring food safety ensures human life and health and is related to the species' survival. Authorities must step in firmly to control. It is even proposed to include it in the Penal Code to have sanctions strong enough to deter.

Businesses in Vietnam must also proactively approach and apply learning technology for breeding and producing advanced breeds in the world, raising livestock to ensure disease safety and food hygiene and safety. Thus, I think the prevention of smuggled cattle and poultry will be resolved well.

Currently, according to regulations of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), livestock products that want to be exported must come from disease-free areas. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the Government have created a legal corridor to support vaccines and agricultural materials to build disease-free livestock areas. However, with the mutation of viruses in livestock and poultry, such as foot-and-mouth disease and blue ear epidemic..., if Vietnam cannot prevent the smuggling of livestock and poultry, it will undoubtedly be hazardous. It isn't easy to build disease-free livestock areas. In your opinion, is this point of view correct?

That point of view is entirely correct. There are disease-free livestock areas that have been recognized. However, if we leave the phenomenon of smuggled imports uncontrolled, no matter how much we spend, we will not be able to solve the problem of disease-free livestock farming. Another essential thing is that the breed must be traceable to its origin. If the breed is smuggled, its origin cannot be traced, which is dangerous.

Thank you so much!