HCM City plans to form a pork trading floor which will have advanced technology and careful control of pork origin to ensure quality.

The city’s Department of Industry and Trade is working on forming the trading floor, which will allow direct purchases, without intermediaries, from pig farmers.

Large, growing pork markets such as China and Japan have not bought pork from Viet Nam through large scale exporting, but instead through small border trade as international trade requires higher food safety standards.

The city has begun a programme to keep better track of pork origin to ensure higher-quality products.

By the end of 2017, 2,644 pig farms and 38 slaughterhouses had joined the programme, according to the city’s Department of Industry and Trade. The department has also held around 85 training sessions for farmers.

As part of the programme, traders and consumers can look up information about the pork they have bought and their origin by scanning the QR code on each pork package which has quality stamps.

In HCM City, 7,500 to 8,000 pigs are supplied with a clear source of origin each day.

The city plans to replace all manual slaughtering activities with machinery by the end of 2018, and make sure every slaughterhouse is equipped with freezers to store pork.

According to the department, the city consumes US$500 million worth of pork every year. – VNS