Early last week, many newspapers ran stories that families of Dong Ngan village in Dong Anh District were using chloric acid to bleach the light brown industrial eggs from China and advertise them as eggs produced by free-range hens in local gardens.

“The information is inaccurate,” the Hanoi People’s Committee said in a statement.

According to ThanhNien News.com, the conclusion came after the committee sent concerned agencies to go inspect the situation last Thursday following the reports.

They checked 6,000 eggs at the premises of local supplier Nguyen Thi Tha in the village. The results showed that the eggs were not bleached but bought from a breeder named Huy in another commune in Dong Anh District. Huy also produced papers confirming that his chickens had been vaccinated.

The inspectors came up with similar findings after checking six other egg suppliers in the district, ThanhNien News.com reports.

The Ministry of Health and the Market Management Bureau are also working on the case but have made no announcement yet.

Nguyen Thanh Son, deputy head of the Husbandry Department under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, said the spread of information about bleached eggs had affected the northern market as industrial eggs were sold at VND100-150 cheaper each.

Factory produced eggs from China have been disguised as local for sale in Ho Chi Minh City recently, with no one knowing where they came from.

Truong Chi Thien, director of HCMC-based egg supplier Vinh Thanh Dat, told Saigon Tiep Thi early last week he has tried some white eggs advertised as “garden eggs” only to find out that they were industrial eggs that had been bleached.

Hoang Kim Giao, head of the Husbandry Department, said people can tell industrial eggs from real garden eggs using the precision scale as industrial eggs weigh between 52-56 grams while the others weigh 42-46 grams.