FAO in Viet Nam

The Project Review Meeting on Evidence-Based Risk Management along the Livestock Production and Market Chain

22/05/2019

Bac Giang, Viet Nam. The risk of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) introduction and spread as well as the expanding gene pool of the influenza A virus have posed a potentially serious impact on animal and public health in Asia. Even though a number of actions have been taken to mitigate this risk, several areas remain to be addressed and tackled. One of which is the management practices and biosecurity in poultry value chain.

Responding to this need, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) have supported FAO with the “Evidence-Based Risk Management along the Livestock Production and Market Chain” project since 2016. This project engages national and local stakeholders to address needs to improve poultry value chain at the country level.

Being one of the four country components (apart from Cambodia, Lao PDR and Myanmar), the Viet Nam project aims to improve management practices and biosecurity along the market chain (hatchery, layer and broiler farms) in Bac Giang province. Bac Giang is one of the provinces with the highest poultry density in the North of Viet Nam. The famous trade-marked chicken named “Yen The” of the province are sold to all northern provinces. However, the implementation of biosecurity in Bac Giang’s poultry farms and hatcheries is still very poor, contributing to low production efficiency and increasing risk of animal and zoonotic diseases. Although the legislations of Viet Nam regarding auditing on veterinary hygiene conditions are available, they are not suitable for the more common small-scale production. This results in each province using different standards for small hatchery and farm auditing and certification, and Bac Giang is no exception.

Since the implementation of the project, the participating farms and hatcheries have shown significant improvements in biosecurity practices and are certified to meet the official veterinary hygiene standards. Some of the hatchery and farm models have reported an increase of 5-10% in hatchability, an increase of 3-6% in egg productivity and a reduction of 40-50% in antimicrobial use.

On 22 May, FAO in collaboration with the Department of Livestock Production (DLP) organized a project review meeting in Bac Giang province with the participation of 38 representatives from FAO, DLP, Sub-DLPAH and poultry farmers. The participants together reviewed the progress of the Viet Nam component, which focusses on improving farmers understanding on good husbandry and biosecurity practices, strengthening capacity of local authorities on poultry hatchery/ farm auditing and supporting registration, auditing and certification system of hatcheries. The meeting highlighted the updates on the project outputs up to May 2019 and the completion plan of the remaining activities. Furthermore, the sustainability and scale-up of the project activities was also discussed. At this meeting, the key farmers of the project had an opportunity to share the experience of how the project has supported their poultry production and risk management as well as the benefits they have gained.
Commenting on the achievements, Dr. Ian Dacre - Deputy Regional Manager of the Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases (ECTAD), FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (FAO-RAP), emphasized that: “The biosecurity measures should be advocated and implemented along with poultry value chain to ensure better quality of poultry products and avoid disease spreading by DLP and Sub- DLPAHs. Moreover, these effective biosafety measures should be recommended for pig production to prevent swine flock from African Swine Fever (ASF) disease, which is very serious and of high risk of spreading in Viet Nam at present.”