HCM City (VNS/VNA) - A new circular issued by the Ministryof Agriculture and Rural Development has postponed the opening of modernslaughterhouses and delayed the closing of old facilities.

In late August, contractors finished levellingground for a 15 million USD slaughterhouse of An Ha LLC in Cu Chi district, Ho ChiMinh City. However, Nguyen Thi Hong Tham, director of the An Ha Company, is worriedthat the construction of some important departments will be delayed while otherfacilities will need to be changed to adapt to standards regulated by the newcircular.

The company will have to adjust its design planor move some departments to avoid violating the circular. “We have to move thefactory away and upgrade animal shelters to fit regulations,” Tham said.

However, the most difficult condtition is that“a slaughter has to locate at least 500m from residential areas, schools andhospitals” which was not cited in former circulars. Therefore, the An HaCompany stopped building its cold storage facility and moved the main slaughteraway from neighbours’ fences to meet the requirement.  

“How can we make sure our factory is 500m awayfrom residential areas since beyond the fence is their land? In the future, ifthey build a house, we will, again, violate the circular,” she said.

Due to those changes, nearly 100 containers ofequipment imported from Germany are being stored at a port, awaiting shipmentto Vietnam.

“At present, we are dividing the plan intosmaller categories. For each category, we must prepare documents to report tocity authorities,” Tham added.

The An Ha Company is not alone. Many otherslaughterhouses approved by HCM People’s Committee will have to adjust theirplans to adapt to the circular.

The city has planned to develop modernslaughterhouses to replace old ones since 2010, according to HCMC Department ofAgricultural and Rural Development, with the city People’s Committee approvinga plan aiming to operate six industrial slaughterhouses by the end of 2016.However, due to financial and administrative difficulties, no facility openedlast year, and thus the city still could not close the old facilities.

On April 25, 2017, the HCMC People’s Committeeapproved “The planning of slaughterhouse system in HCMC from 2016 to 2020”. Itsgoal is to put six industrial slaughters into operation by the end of 2017 andclose all existing outdated slaughterhouses except for two plants in Can Gio district.

Per the plan, all the city’s slaughteractivities will be run in six industrial slaughterhouses with capacity of10,000 to 15,000 pigs per day.

However, at present, the goal seems likely to bemissed as almost all the projects won’t be finished by the end of 2017.

For some projects, investors have just startedlevelling the ground, while the An Ha Company project has to change its designand plans to begin operating by 2018 at the earliest.

Bach Dang Quang, director of Tan HiepCooperative, the investor of Tan Hiep Food Processing Factory in Hoc Mon districtsaid that they are facing difficulties in terms of infrastructure. Specifically,though the co-operative has the capital to build a factory and set upfacilities, the road leading to the factory has not been built, despite thecity promising to build it.

“The current riverside road is small andseriously eroded. We do not know whether there will be a new one for lorrieswhen the factory is built,” said Quang.-VNA