Police in Lam Dong Province, located in Vietnam’s Central Highlands, have discovered several cases of traders misrepresenting the origin of Chinese potatoes by covering them with a layer of Da Lat’s red dust.

The provincial police on Thursday inspected eight vegetable trading businesses in Don Duong and Duc Trong Districts.

Inspection teams found that at the Huyen Thuy Trang granary in Don Duong District, Huyen, the granary owner, and ten workers were packaging potatoes after another worker covered them with red dust.

The worker said some 2.5 metric tons of potatoes had been covered with such red dust ahead of their sales to a trader in Ho Chi Minh City.

Huyen confessed to police that her potatoes had been imported from China. 

At the Thuong Vui granary in Duc Trong District, police also discovered workers covering Chinese potatoes with Da Lat soil to pass them off as locally grown vegetables from Da Lat, Lam Dong’s capital city.

During the inspection, officers found approximately one metric ton of Chinese potatoes covered in Da Lat's red soil at the Thuong Vui granary in Duc Trong District.

The owner admitted that the potatoes were imported from China, sent first to Bac Ninh Province in northern Vietnam, and later transported to Duc Trong.

They were intended for resale to traders in south-central provinces like Khanh Hoa and Binh Thuan, as well as Dong Nai and Ca Mau in the south.

The investigation expanded to other granaries, such as Tam Uyen and Chuc Quynh in Don Duong District, where police found that the operators were unable to provide documents proving the origins of their potatoes and were conducting business without proper licenses.

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