HCM City (VNA) –Ho Chi Minh City plans to form a pork trading floor which will have advancedtechnology and careful control of pork origin to ensure quality.
The municipal Department of Industry and Trade is working on forming thetrading floor, which will allow direct purchases, without intermediaries, frompig farmers.
Large, growing pork markets such as China and Japan have not bought pork from Vietnamthrough large scale exporting, but instead through small border trade asinternational trade requires higher food safety standards.
The city has begun a programme to keep better track of pork origin to ensurehigher-quality products.
By the end of 2017, 2,644 pig farms and 38 slaughterhouses had joined theprogramme, according to the city’s Department of Industry and Trade. Thedepartment has also held around 85 training sessions for farmers.
As part of the programme, traders and consumers can look up information aboutthe pork they have bought and their origin by scanning the QR code on each porkpackage which has quality stamps.
In HCM City, 7,500 to 8,000 pigs are supplied with a clear source of origineach day.
The city plans to replace all manual slaughtering activities with machinery bythe end of 2018, and make sure every slaughterhouse is equipped with freezersto store pork.
According to the department, the city consumes 500 million USD worth of porkevery year.-VNA