The program is aimed enhance the state management and supervision in food safety, protect legal interests and health of consumers as well as increasing their trusts.Along with the pilot application of QR codes to control the origin of fruits, the city will also apply a pilot authentication code against fake goods and use QR codes to trace the sources of some products such as vegetables, meats and seafood.
The city will also set up regulations and identification codes to establish a safe food chain in the city and a data centre to enable internet access to check product information with smartphones or devices set up at agricultural product shops.
After the pilot, the QR code application will be expanded next year to use for traceability of other agricultural products, production facilities, farms, slaughterhouses, large-scale processing establishments, supermarkets, wholesale markets and market management boards.
QR code will be used to trace the origins of fruits in Hanoi in 2018
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At the same time, the rate of traceability by QR code in small-scale production and business establishments will increase by 30-50 per cent.
The City People’s Committee has also assigned the Hanoi Department of Agriculture and Rural Development to co-ordinate with related units to set up plans to maintain and develop the application of QR codes for product traceability in the city.
Before Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City has also started tracing the origin of poultry meat sold at the city’s retail outlets since October last year, in which customers can use the QR Code decoding applications from Zalo or from www.te-food.com to scan the electronic stamp on packages.
The stamps will contain information about the poultry strain, breeding period, name of farm, feed, vaccination schedule, when slaughtered and others.
The traceable chickens were bred at the company’s farm in Binh Duong and other farms with which it collaborated in Dong Nai, Binh Duong, Binh Phuoc, Tien Giang, and Long An provinces.
Nguyen Ngoc Hoa, deputy director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Industry and Trade, said it is easier to trace the origins of poultry meat and eggs than that of pork because chicken farms are not small and scattered like pig farms.
Once the program stabilizes, traceable poultry meat and eggs would also be sold through traditional markets, he said.
The department has instructed each sales outlet to put up banners and instruction boards and post staff to help customers with tracing the origin of products, he said.
Thirty five farms supplying chicks, 431 selling chicken meat, 59 selling chicken eggs, 13 slaughterhouses and meat packaging establishments, and nine egg packaging establishments have registered to join the program.
Hoa said the program managers would continue to study other poultry farms and persuade those with a closed breeding process to sign up.
