Quarantine officials among 8 charged over 300-tonne diseased pork scandal in Hanoi

Four suspects, namely Nguyen Thi Hien, 31; Do Van Thanh, 43; Nguyen Thi Binh, 53; and Nguyen Van Thanh, 55, director of Cuong Phat Food Co., Ltd., are charged with violating food safety regulations.

Three officials from a slaughter control and testing center under Hanoi’s livestock and veterinary sub-department, including Le Ngoc Anh, 52; Nguyen Phong Nam, 43; and Nguyen Thi Phuong Lan, 42, are accused of abusing their positions for personal gain.

Vu Kim Tuan, 53, a veterinary official in neighboring Phu Tho Province, faces charges of falsifying documents.

The case came to light on March 17 when economic police officers inspected a slaughterhouse operated by Nguyen Thi Hien in Nam Phu Commune, Hanoi.

The site is known to supply large volumes of pork to wholesale markets, traditional markets, and major food distributors in the Vietnamese capital.

Officers found that Hien had processed pigs infected with African swine fever, a highly contagious disease.

Authorities alleged that she and her accomplices formed a closed supply chain, sourcing sick pigs from northern Vietnamese provinces such as Phu Tho and Tuyen Quang, transporting them to Hanoi for slaughter, and distributing the meat to consumers.

Police said the group colluded with quarantine officials to bypass mandatory controls, allowing infected and even dead pigs to enter the slaughter process.

Since early this year, the suspects are believed to have sold around 3,600 diseased pigs, equivalent to nearly 300 metric tons of pork.

The meat was distributed to wholesale and local markets and supplied to Cuong Phat Food Company, which in turn provided food products for several school canteens in Hanoi.

This marks another diseased pork scandal involving quarantine officials in Vietnam this year.

In mid-January, police in the northern port city of Hai Phong detained a senior quarantine inspection official for allegedly accepting bribes from Halong Canfoco, a big Vietnamese canned food producer, as authorities were investigating a major food safety scandal involving the company’s diseased pork products.

The official was identified as Tran Thi Huong, 52, deputy head of the mobile fisheries vessel monitoring and quarantine station at the Sub-Department of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Services, under the Hai Phong Department of Agriculture and Environment.