Eggs surrounded by vegetables for sale at Thai Ha Market in Hanoi.

Nguyen Thi Thuy tried to put some trays of chicken eggs onto the top of an already tall pile to make some room in her cramped stall at Hanoi’s Truong Dinh Market.

“Nobody wants to buy them. They are scared they’ll be buying bleached eggs although the government has dismissed the reports as unfounded,” she said.

Before the rumors began flying, Thuy sold hundreds of eggs every day.

“Now it is difficult to sell even a few dozen,” she said as she turned on the TV to kill time.

Earlier this month, several newspapers ran stories about smallholders in Dong Ngan Village in Hanoi’s Dong Anh District using hydrochloric acid to bleach the light brown shells of eggs imported from China and advertise them as eggs laid by free-ranging hens in their gardens.

Because of their supposed nutritional superiority, the eggs had been fetching VND3,700 apiece, or double the normal price.

After sending inspectors to check the egg farms and markets, the Hanoi People’s Committee tried to scotch the rumors by issuing a statement that they were groundless.

It had little effect and the public were not tempted when eggs dropped in price.

“Our shop has never had so few customers. I’m not making enough even to pay the rent for my stall,” said Le Thu Huong, who sells eggs at a market off Hanoi’s Minh Khai Street.

The smallholding families who raise chickens and hens for their meat and eggs are hurting the most as their incomes are meager at the best of times. The capital city is estimated to have 12-13 million hens producing 6-6.5 million eggs daily.

“There’ve been very few merchants coming to buy our eggs for several days now because they are selling poorly at the markets, so we’ve got more than 1,000 eggs in stock,” said Nguyen Thi Dao of Thuong Tin District, where her family raises nearly 300 hens for their eggs.

Many Hanoians have stopped eating eggs altogether.

Nguyen Thuy Ngoc of Minh Khai Street said her daughter no longer dared touch what had been her favorite cooking.

“It’s easier to simply stop them rather than continue eating and worry all the time,” Ngoc said.

“I stopped buying eggs at the market when I first heard the rumor a fortnight ago. Since then I’ve only used eggs sent by my farming in-laws in Nam Dinh

Province,” said Nguyen Thu Ha, a resident of Hong Mai Street, as she stood at a fish stall that had previously sold eggs.

Dang Vu Minh, chairman of the National Assembly’s Science, Technology and Environment Committee, is aware of the harm done to producers by the bleaching rumor.

“The relevant government agencies should investigate the matter thoroughly and have their findings published in the news media,” Minh told reporters on the sidelines of the current NA sitting.

One hindrance to controlling the situation is the lack of staff and equipment to check food coming into Vietnam as it arrives, and of storage facilities at border checkpoints to keep food until government inspectors can approve or reject it.

The authorities in Hanoi have been on the lookout for bleach or otherwise made-over eggs from the north since October 17, but have not found any yet.

Hanoi Health Department chief Le Anh Tuan advises the public not to worry but cautions them to only buy eggs of proven origin and safety.

Hoang Kim Giao, head of the Animal Husbandry Department, says it’s easy to tell industrial eggs from free-range eggs with a precision scale as the former weigh 52-56 grams while the garden variety weigh 42-46 grams.

Reported by Bao Van