From WATTAgNet:

Vietnam’s minister of agriculture and rural development wants to cut the time and cost of animal feed inspections by half.

Storage fees at ports during quarantine are one of the biggest issues facing businesses. Raw materials imported for animal feed production must be quarantined and undergo quality inspection.

The director general of Aprocimex, an animal feed processing joint stock company, said the high price of raw materials for animal feed are due to the quality inspections and storage fees.

Plant quarantine procedures and quality inspection can take up to 10 days, said Director General of Quang Minh Corporation Tran Thanh Quang.

Some in the industry suggested changes in the rules that require that every order be inspected.

"Why must importers wait for weeks, or spend billions of dong on storage fees, if they haven’t made any violations for a long time, like 10 years? " said Pham Van Tiep, director of ABC joint stock company.

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Cao Duc Phat ordered the Animal Husbandry and Plant Protection Departments to hold talks with businesses this month to find ways to minimize the time and monetary costs. He requested the Plant Protection Department to study the frequency of inspections in other countries, especially exporting countries that demand inspections before they provide quality certificates for their product.

He also requested more resources and equipment to speed up the inspection process.