Slaughterhouse treating chicken with kerosene busted in Vietnam

Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City has just busted an illegal poultry slaughterhouse that treated unquarantined chicken with a mixture of kerosene and chemicals to turn the white skin yellow, local media reported on Monday.

Vo Van Diep, the slaughterhouse owner, failed to present any quarantine documents for the 310 chickens pending butchering at his facility, according to the police, who also found the slaughterhouse was operating without a business license.

The owner admitted that he had sourced the poultry from the southern province of Tien Giang and doused them in a "special mixture of liquids" to make them look tastily yellowish before selling them to the market.

The mixture consists of a black chemical powder Diep bought from a market in District 5 and kerosene, he said.

The illicit slaughterhouse sold 100 to 200 such chickens to the market on a daily basis, Diep said.

The police also found some pigs are slaughtered at illegal facilities in the southern province of Dong Nai, where Ho Chi Minh City eatery owners source pork and poultry. At such unlicensed abattoirs, pigs are killed and butchered right on the dirty floor by topless men who tend to use their bare hands to turn the animals around and "wash" them with their bare feet.

An illegal facility can slaughter up to 60 pigs per night and the pork, with no safety and hygiene certificate, is distributed to downtown Dong Nai and Ho Chi Minh City for sale on the market. Endi