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Modern slaughterhouses fail to beat illegal facilities

Modern slaughterhouses fail to beat illegal facilities

Monday, August 19, 2013, 10:40 GMT+7

Many modern and well-equipped slaughterhouses in Dong Nai Province fail to operate at full capacity, as local farmers still prefer to have their pigs slaughtered at illegal facilities, where costs are lower but hygiene risks are higher.

Nguyen Quang Tho finds it hard to crack a smile these days while talking about his VND5 billion slaughterhouse, spanning 1,500 square meters in Long Khanh Town, as the facility receives only 50 pigs on a daily basis.

“Employees have to work on only 35 pigs during the worst days,” Tho added, saying he can only earn a profit with at least 100 pigs sent for slaughtering per day.

It takes only three hours for the employees to cover all of the work for a whole day. The facility has a design capacity of slaughtering 200 animals per day.

Tho said most of the customers are his acquaintances or relatives, while local pig farmers never send their animals to his house, even though he only charges them VND50,000 per pig, equal to the price of the illegal slaughterhouses.

Similarly, the slaughterhouse of the Dong Nai Food Processing Plant (D&F) has never operated at full capacity since it was imported from the EU in 2007.

The VND100 billion facility is capable of slaughtering 100 pigs per hour, and 2,000 chickens per hour, but it only operates at 20-30 percent of this capacity every day, said director Nguyen Tuan Phuong.

Phuong said at full capacity, the cost price for slaughtering is only VND60,000 per pig. But the real cost is currently VND200,000 per pig, which puts the company in a dilemma.

“If we charge the right cost, no customers will come as it is too expensive; on the other hand, we will soon die from losses if we reduce prices to compete,” Phuong said.

Illegal preferred

Pham Duc Binh, deputy chairman of the Dong Nai Husbandry Association, said modern facilities are not the common choice of farmers as most people still prefer the traditional slaughtering method, and hold the habit of consuming “hot meat,” which is put on sale shortly after it is slaughtered.

Most of the old slaughterhouses are located inside residential areas, near the markets and butchers’. These facilities are out of the control of veterinary agencies.

“It takes less time to slaughter the animals, but of course, there is less hygiene,” said Binh. “Moreover, the facilities do not have to pay quarantine and environment fees, thus they have lower production cost than the modern slaughterhouse,” he added.

Phuong, of the D&F Co, said the only effective solution to the issue is to strengthen checks on the pork before they are put on shelves in markets countrywide.

“Should the market management officers request that traders have quarantine certificates for their meat, no one will ever source meat from the illegal slaughterhouses again,” he explained.

Meanwhile, Tho said it is the loose management by local authorities on illegal facilities that has ‘killed’ the modern slaughterhouses.

Tho said when he reported his investment plan to Long Khanh town authorities, they promised that they would increase checks on the illegal facilities to create better conditions for his slaughterhouse.

“But nothing has changed,” he said.

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