Agricultural and livestock products must assure food safety and traceability to meet market requirements. This urgent task not only ensures health but also protects national prestige and demonstrates the competitiveness of enterprises.
On August 23, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development hosted a business - consumer matching forum themed “Catching the wave of organic foods” in Hanoi. The forum delved into impacts of the use of banned substances by businesses on export performances. Speaking at the forum, Mr Truong Dinh Tuyen, Former Minister of Trade (now Ministry of Industry and Trade), emphasised, “I praise severe crackdown on the use of prohibited substances. We have dozens of millions of businesses and business households and we cannot examine all of them. This is just the surface and the most important work is restructuring agriculture.”
He added that, after the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was signed and the Vietnam - European Union Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) wrapped up negotiations, challenges to agricultural products or products made from agricultural produce such as pork and chicken were brought to light. The biggest challenge is Vietnam fails to ensure sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) standard measures to take advantage of opportunities when signatory partners impose zero tax on Vietnam’s agricultural and aquatic products as soon as the agreement takes effect. Duties on the rest will be scrapped in 3 - 5 years. Only a few cases will be imposed tariff quotas.
“In case SPS measures are not guaranteed, Vietnam will not be able to enjoy the opportunities or take on the challenges ensuing. Therefore, the urgent work is ensuring the production of organic agricultural products and foods,” said Tuyen.
Giving evidence to the rampant use of chemicals, Prof. Nguyen Lan Dung said Vietnam presently imports 4,100 types of pesticides, including 1,643 types of active substances. Meanwhile, China, which is much bigger than our country, uses only about 600 active substances. On average, Vietnam imports 70,000 - 100,000 tonnes of pesticides a year.
In recommending solutions for controlling banned substance, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Vu Van Tam said, it is important to increase the connectivity of safe products certified by authorities to consumers and connect products made by honest companies to the market.
Mr Hoang Thanh Van, Director of the Department of Livestock Production, said the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development launched a campaign to examine prohibited substances from October 2014. The ministry also proposed the lawmaking National Assembly amend the Penal Code to criminalise acts of trading banned substances.
Former Minister Tuyen pointed out that agricultural restructuring must be based on two spearheads, concentrating land and applying science and technology, as well as forming production networks and value chains from seeding, cultivation and processing. We control the quality in some stages only. It is important to distribute benefits of stages because now only processors and traders have benefits when prices go up.”
Huong Ly- VCCI News
