Hanoi tightens control over slaughterhouses for food safety

A report by Hanoi’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development shows that the city now has a total of 726 livestock and poultry slaughterhouses. Of those, modern slaughter facilities are operating at only 15 to 30 percent of designated capacity. The remaining semi-industrial or small-scale facilities are not eligible for the city’s network of concentrated livestock and poultry slaughterhouses or have not been licensed by the local authorities.

To comply with the Law on Veterinary Medicine and the Law on Planning, the Hanoi City People’s Committee issued Decision 761/QD-UBND dated February 17, 2020 approving the “Network of concentrated livestock and poultry slaughterhouses in the city.” Accordingly, there are 29 slaughterhouses in 14 districts and towns, including eight industrial slaughterhouses, eight concentrated slaughtering facilities and 13 small-scale concentrated slaughtering facilities. So far, only 10 out of 29 concentrated livestock and poultry slaughterhouses according to the city’s planning are operational (accounting for 34.5 percent).

According to Ta Van Tuong, Deputy Director of the Hanoi Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, the locality is still facing many difficulties in the investment and construction of concentrated slaughterhouses due to complicated procedures and large funding for land allocation. In addition, the construction of slaughtering facilities, especially for waste and wastewater treatment items, must meet the current requirements of environmental sanitation standards.

In addition, support policies to encourage investment in the slaughtering operation are not effective and practical enough to draw investors. A large number of small-scale slaughterhouses and households operating at low costs still exist along with concentrated slaughterhouses. Therefore, it is difficult for the concentrated slaughterhouses to compete with the small-scale facilities due to high investment costs.

In order to remove bottlenecks in the control of slaughterhouses and ensure food safety and hygiene, in the coming time, Hanoi will focus on removing and solving difficulties and obstacles of investors regarding the investment and construction of livestock and poultry slaughtering projects. The city will also strengthen inspection and handling of facilities that violate regulations in terms of location, environment and unlicensed operation. The functional forces will strengthen control of the origin of meat products, and only allow the trading of products from licensed facilities.

Ta Van Tuong also proposed that the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development advise the government to amend Decree 57/2018/ND-CP in the direction of supporting the types of slaughter that are licensed by the authorities and support investors immediately as they make investments in this field, at the same time promulgate regulations on classifying animal slaughter facilities based on their slaughter capacity instead of the current business registration type to be consistent with the decentralization of food safety management.

Nguyen Hanh