Chicken legs were found with pus in a cold store in Ho Chi Minh City.

Imported meat is being tested loosely in Ho Chi Minh City with officials not following due process on account of it being too cold.

The checking process at Cat Lai Port that day lasted around five minutes.

Officials from the Animal Health Center Zone 6 that manages animal heath and animal products in the south, said if more samples were to be taken from deep inside the container, the whole shipment would have to be unloaded and the meat would be spoiled when it is no longer kept at 180 degrees Celsius below zero.

Meanwhile, an officer from a meat importer in HCMC who wished not to be named said there would be no damage to the meat no matter where the samples were taken from.

The officer said the meat is frozen and won’t thaw if it is removed from its place to the container door to be tested for 15-20 minutes.

Nguyen Xuan Binh, director of the center under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, said the testing process is strict in theory but not in practice.

Binh said most animal health officials just check three samples at the container door because the center only has four officials to check hundreds of imported cooking containers that come in every month with thousands of boxes each every month.

Even when the meat has been found unsafe or unhygienic and importers ordered to dispose of it or send it back, they can still be smuggled into local markets by mixing it among the clean meat that they unload from cold storage around the city at night, when there are no officials around.

Only the owner of the frozen stores would know how much has been taken away.

Phan Xuan Thao, head of HCMC Animal Health Department, said the city has nearly 50 cold storage facilities, excluding illegal stores, so it’s hard to control all of them properly.

Thao also said officials rarely go into the stores for checking as it’s very cold inside.

Reported by Bach Hoan – Tran Manh