HÀ NỘI — “It is likely that the first shipment of Vietnamese chicken will be exported to certain markets this year,” a Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) official has said.

Hoàng Thanh Vân, director of the Department of Animal Husbandry under MARD, said on Thursday the ministry and local authorities were making efforts to boost trade promotion to export chicken to markets such as Japan and Europe where the Vietnamese product had never been sold.

He said last year, the southern province of Đồng Nai organised a working visit to Hà Nội to propose a programme to produce safe food from disease-free poultry so that chicken could be exported to Japan.

The proposal was approved by MARD leaders, and, currently, some enterprises in the province were meeting with Japanese counterparts. If they agreed to import the product, they would start checking on breeding facilities, Vân said.

Besides this, the southern province of Bình Phước, which has developed a large number of farms, was also organising trade promotion activities to access foreign markets, focusing on Japan, EU and some Asian markets, he added.

Vân said “Currently, most of the import countries have their own standards, thus to be able to export to the markets, we have to meet their technical standards and the requirements of farm facilities.”

“Certainly importing countries would send officials to Việt Nam to check the origins and quality of products that would be oisplayed on their shelves.”

Vân added that Vietnamese chicken products of some local brands were highly welcomed by foreign markets. However, whether the product could be sent abroad depended greatly on efforts of farmers, breeders and businesses.

“There are still many hardships on the way,” Vân stressed. — VNS