Prime Minister requests to ensure food supply during Lunar New Year

On December 6, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh signed and issued Directive No. 29 on preventing smuggling and illegal transportation of animals and animal products, controlling diseases, developing sustainable livestock farming, and ensuring food supply.

According to the directive, although the Prime Minister has issued many directives, the situation of smuggling poultry, pigs, buffaloes and cows is still complicated in some localities, causing the risk of disease transmission and food insecurity.

In addition, animal diseases, especially African swine fever, continue to occur in some localities, greatly affecting livestock development, increasing costs, production costs, economic losses for livestock farmers, causing risks of food insecurity and reducing supply in the coming time.

Faced with the above situation, the Prime Minister requested provinces and cities to direct forces to strengthen inspection, supervision and control, especially at border gates, trails, openings in border areas, seaports, rivers... to promptly prevent, detect and strictly handle cases of illegal trafficking and transportation of animals and animal products across the border into Vietnam.

Focus on directing and prioritizing the allocation of resources to organize drastic, synchronous and effective implementation of measures to prevent and control animal diseases, especially African swine fever. It is necessary to promote vaccination against African swine fever in pork herds.

At the same time, guide livestock farmers to increase the application of livestock farming measures towards commodity concentration, biosecurity, and disease safety to reduce production costs and improve economic efficiency in livestock farming.

The Prime Minister assigned the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to closely monitor the situation and proactively direct and deploy measures to ensure food supply before, during and after the 2024 Lunar New Year.

Direct veterinary agencies to strengthen quarantine work on import and transportation of animals and animal products domestically according to legal regulations, and strictly handle violations.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade directs market management forces and relevant units to coordinate with veterinary forces, police, and traffic inspectors to handle cases of illegal trading and transportation of animals and animal products of unknown origin and not yet quarantined on the market; have solutions to control, reduce intermediary costs, and increase economic benefits for breeders.

Strengthen market inspection and control, prevent speculation, hoarding, trade fraud, market manipulation, unreasonable price hikes that cause damage to consumers and affect domestic livestock development...