A new survey indicates that Vietnamese consumers are prepared to pay more to buy safe, better-tasting chicken raised outdoors on free-range pastures, say official sources.

Five hundred consumers and 50 retailers were surveyed in Hanoi. Seven out of ten households would pay up to 10 per cent more for guaranteed safe food products.

Meanwhile, 68 per cent of consumers say their main response to disease outbreaks is to continue buying the same type of meat but shift to meat with that carried confirmation of origin and some form of health certification.

The survey, funded by the US government through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), comes at the start of a new US-funded initiative designed to strengthen the free-range poultry sector in Vietnam and better control the spread of avian influenza and other poultry diseases.

The initiative aims to create public-private partnerships to developing supply chains – from poultry farms all the way to the consumer – that promote chickens raised under traditional conditions with high standards for safety, free from avian influenza and other poultry diseases.

Through September 2009, the project will initially help poultry cooperatives and animal feed and breeding companies with their networks of farmers to raise production standards while promoting higher consumer awareness of healthy chickens.