Quarantine officer accused of aiding sale of 10,000 tonnes of tainted pork in Ho Chi Minh City

Ho Chi Minh City police said on Monday that they had launched a criminal case and arrested Nguyen Van Hieu, 41, and eight alleged accomplices to investigate violations involving food safety, banned goods trading, bribery and receiving bribes.

Hieu, a resident of Dong Nai City, faces charges of violating food safety regulations and offering bribes.

Vo Quoc Son, 37, an animal quarantine officer under the Dong Nai Sub-Department of Livestock Production and Fisheries, was charged with receiving bribes from Hieu to sign off on quarantine documents without conducting physical inspections.

These certificates enabled Hieu’s group to transport pigs across provinces without proper checks.

The group allegedly issued fake origin papers to bypass inter-provincial quarantine requirements; supplied pigs to slaughterhouses in Ho Chi Minh City and other provinces; and stopped using salbutamol about 10 days before inspections, giving pigs detoxifying agents to avoid detection from authorities.

Investigators said the methods enabled hundreds of metric tons of contaminated pork to reach consumers every day through wholesale markets, traditional markets, and supermarkets.

The pork was ultimately served in homes, schools, restaurants and industrial kitchens, posing serious health risks, police said.

In late July, local police and officials from the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Agriculture and Environment inspected three trucks carrying 280 pigs, discovering that all tested positive for salbutamol, a banned substance used in livestock farming.

Eighty of the pigs also carried African swine fever virus.

Subsequent raids at 14 sites in Dong Nai uncovered 3,909 pigs weighing over 500 metric tons that tested positive for salbutamol. These animals were later destroyed.

In addition, more than 1,000 kilograms of salbutamol were confiscated, enough to mix into 3,000 metric tons of animal feed.

Investigators traced the banned substance to Nguyen Thi Trinh Nu, 37, from Vinh Long Province in southern Vietnam.

She allegedly imported feed additives from Thailand and Cambodia, selling them at VND375,000 ($14) per kilogram.

Farmers mixed 100 grams of salbutamol with 300 kilograms of feed for 100 pigs, significantly increasing lean meat in just 30 days.