Request to ‘recall unsafe shipments’ in Ha Long Canned Food case

The Department of Quality, Processing and Market Development (Ministry of Agriculture and Environment) has just requested the Hai Phong Department of Agriculture and Environment to provide information related to the case of 130 tons of pork infected with African cholera from Ha Long Canning Joint Stock Company.

Accordingly, the Department requested the Department to report on the food safety and disease safety management work carried out with this enterprise. At the same time, local authorities need to monitor the investigation, retrieval and recall of unsafe shipments to handle violations.

Localities also need to increase inspection and supervision of post-inspection activities with establishments that are not subject to food safety certification.

Regarding the dirty meat case of Ha Long Canned Food Company, on January 12, Hai Phong Food Safety Interdisciplinary Steering Committee requested units to tighten management of the entire meat supply chain, from slaughtering, processing, trading and consumption in the market.

Interdisciplinary inspection teams are assigned to closely monitor slaughterhouses, people’s markets, and small businesses and strictly handle meat trading of unknown origin that does not ensure food safety, including the risk of infection with the African swine fever virus.

Two days ago, Hai Phong Police urgently arrested the General Director of Ha Long Canning Joint Stock Company and 3 employees related to the responsibility of managing the quality of input materials.

According to the investigation, in September 2025, the Economic Police Department of Hai Phong City Police discovered 2 cars carrying 1.2 tons of pork of unknown origin, positive for the African swine fever virus. Expanding the case, the authorities discovered about 130 tons of infected frozen pork stored at the warehouse of Ha Long Canning Joint Stock Company.

From this amount of meat, the business processed more than 1.7 tons of finished pate, equivalent to about 14,000 boxes, on September 6-7, 2025. In addition, some of the company’s other products also tested positive for the African swine fever virus. Authorities determined that the infected meat was collected from dealers in Hung Yen province without legal documents.

Established in 1957 in Hai Phong, Halong Canfoco’s predecessor was Ha Long Canned Fish Factory. In 2021, the company listed on the stock exchange with the code CAN.

After nearly 70 years, Halong Canfoco is producing a series of products such as sausages, canned foods, frozen goods… serving the domestic and export markets. This enterprise has 3 factories, located in Hai Phong, Da Nang and Dong Thap.

Ha Long Canned Food Factory in Hai Phong is located at 71 Le Lai, Ngo Quyen ward. This factory is more than 57,100 m2 wide. Food and seafood production scale with capacity of 4,440 tons per year. Of which, the capacity of canned meat is 1,179 tons, canned fish 71 tons, spring rolls 109 tons, sausages 2,202 tons, canned lotus seeds 495 tons, canned vegetables and fruits 384 tons.

Ha Long Canned Food Factory in Hai Phong announced to stop production from January 12.

Previously, many supermarkets and grocery stores proactively stopped selling, accepted returns and refunded customers who bought pate and canned tuna from Ha Long Canned Food, although the business has not made any moves or policies on product recall.