Vietnam poultry farmers request anti-dumping investigation of US chicken

Hanoi, July 31 (VNA) - The Animal Livestock Associations in the Southeast region and Dong Nai province signed petitions on July 28 for an anti-dumping investigation into chicken imported from the US to save domestic poultry farmers from losses. According to the southeast Animal Livestock Association, recently-collected data showed that the prices of chicken sold at US supermarkets are four to five times higher than that of US chicken sold on the Vietnamese market, although the product is subject to import taxes, not to mention transportation, packing and preservation costs. For example, the average price for whole chickens at US supermarkets is nearly 10 USD (around 200,000 VND) per kg, but in Vietnam the price is only 60,000-70,000 VND (2.8-3.2 USD) per kg. Similarly, US chicken thighs and wings are sold at 8.59-8.65 USD (160,000-170,000 VND) per kg in the US and only 20,000 VND (0.92 USD) in Vietnam. “As such, the association decided to hire lawyers to submit a petition to the Vietnam Competition Authority under the Ministry of Industry and Trade,” stated Le Van Quyet, Deputy Head of the southeast association. The association supposes that the products have problems with quality, date of use or were dumped to kill the livestock industry of Vietnam. According to the southeast Animal Livestock Association, Vietnam has seen an increase in the imported chicken volume in recent years but a decrease in product prices. In 2014, the country purchased more than 80,000 tonnes of chicken with average prices from 1.2-2.2 USD per kg, while the imported volume in the first half of this year was 50,000 tonnes with the price down to 0.65-1 USD per kg. There are about 3,000 chicken farms in the southwest region of Vietnam with a total investment of 6-8 trillion VND (275-366 million USD). With a monthly output of about 8 million chickens, farmers suffer losses of 80-90 billion VND (3.67-4.13 million USD). The loss has reached up to 500 billion VND (22.9 million USD) over the past six months./.