As of Tuesday, smartphones can be used as a tool for Ho Chi Minh City consumers to check a products place of origin when shopping for eggs and poultry in District 1’s Ben Thanh Market.

Customers can use their phones to scan the QR code on the label and quickly obtain information on the product including its origin and the production, vaccination and packaging processes it underwent prior to arriving at the point of sale.

In addition to Ben Thanh Market, customers at Co.op Mart Nhieu Loc in District 3 can take advantage of the new technology as well.

An app called Te-Food is also now available, listing the outlets that sell tested eggs and providing warnings about contaminated foods.

Both are part of a program of management, identification and tracing of eggs and poultry launched by the city’s Department of Industry and Trade on October 3.

According to the department’s deputy director Nguyen Ngoc Hoa, there are 1,749 retail outlets in the city selling traceable poultry, meat and eggs.

So far 35 chicken farms, 431 poultry farms, 61 egg farms, 17 chicken slaughterhouses and poultry packaging units as well as nine egg packaging companies have registered with the program.

Pham Thi Huan, general manager of Ba Huan Co, said that they have supplied about 20 thousand chickens per day that are part of this program.

The plan has also been welcomed by San Ha Co, who supplies more than 15 thousand produce items, or 80-90 percent of its stock per day.

In December 2016, a similar program was launched by the city’s Department of Industry and Trade to trace the origin of pork at modern retail outlets.

Consumers can use the same method of scanning QR codes on labels to obtain the pork’s place of origin and journey to market.

Consumers shopping traceable poultry and eggs at Ben Thanh Market in Ho Chi Minh City on October 3, 2017.

Eggs with traceable labels on sale at a local market.

A customer shopping for poultry with tracing code.

A pack of chicken meat with tracing code.

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