{"id":1312,"date":"2026-07-05T18:29:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T09:29:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vietnam-agri.com\/?post_type=industry_news&p=1312"},"modified":"2026-07-05T18:58:31","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T09:58:31","slug":"khanhhoa-halal-livestock","status":"publish","type":"industry_news","link":"https:\/\/vietnam-agri.com\/en\/industry_news\/khanhhoa-halal-livestock\/","title":{"rendered":"Toward the nation's largest through provincial merger: Khanh Hoa's goats and sheep take on Halal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Khanh Hoa province in south-central Vietnam has begun moving on a plan to raise goats and sheep into 'halal-standard meat products.' On July 2, 2026, the province's livestock and veterinary authority held sheep breeding and husbandry training in Trung Khanh Vinh village, taking the first step in building a production area that looks ahead from establishing model farms to constructing a halal-compliant slaughter and processing system. Khanh Hoa province, which merged with Ninh Thuan province in the 2025 provincial reorganization, is now the country's largest goat- and sheep-raising area. For Japanese food manufacturers and export trading companies whose halal-compliant sourcing has tended to lean on Australia and New Zealand, this is worth reading as news that a new option is beginning to sprout close by in Asia.<\/p>\n

A 'halal production area' plan that began with sheep-rearing training<\/h2>\n

The starting point was sheep breeding and husbandry technical training held on July 2, 2026 in Trung Khanh Vinh village, Khanh Vinh district, by the Khanh Hoa livestock and veterinary department and others. According to media affiliated with Vietnam's Ministry of Agriculture and Environment, the training covered the practical work of breeding and rearing across the board -- how to select breeding sheep, nutrition management, how to build barns, and disease prevention and environmental management.<\/p>\n

That said, this is not a one-off technical-extension event. The province is flying a policy of raising goats and sheep into halal-standard products<\/strong>, and the training is positioned as the entrance to it. The path laid out: within 2026, select representative farmers and build model bases; from 2027 onward, gradually expand intensive-rearing zones. In parallel, draw in corporate investment into a slaughter and processing system that meets halal standards, and complete the chain from production to sales.<\/p>\n

The premise of 'the country's largest goat- and sheep-producing area' created by the provincial merger<\/h2>\n

At the foundation of this plan is the 2025 provincial reorganization. Khanh Hoa province merged with neighboring Ninh Thuan province, and the original article states explicitly that 'after merging with Ninh Thuan, Khanh Hoa became the locality with the largest total head of goats and sheep in the country.'<\/p>\n

The former Ninh Thuan province is known as a dry zone with especially little rain in Vietnam, an exceptional small-ruminant production area within the country where goat and sheep grazing has taken root on the semi-arid grasslands around Phan Rang. In Vietnamese livestock farming, where cattle, pigs and chickens are the leads, the areas where sheep are raised at any scale are almost limited to here. Through the provincial merger, this distinctive production resource entered the same purse as the administrative and investment-attraction clout of Khanh Hoa, the tourism and port city that holds Nha Trang. This is the novelty of the news. The production area's strength has always been there. What changed is the capacity of the body that markets it as a 'flagship provincial product.'<\/p>\n

There is also a national-level tailwind. By Prime Minister's Decision 10\/QD-TTg of February 14, 2023, the Vietnamese government approved the 'Project to Strengthen International Cooperation to Build and Develop the Halal Industry by 2030,' and has advanced the establishment of the National Halal Certification Center (HALCERT) and the development of national standards (TCVN) on halal. A government-affiliated explanatory article introduces estimates putting the world's Muslim population at about 2 billion and the halal market at about US$7.7 trillion, rising to about US$10.5 trillion by 2030. Khanh Hoa's plan can be read as a move to get aboard this national strategy from the 'production-area side.'<\/p>\n

The distance from training to halal slaughterhouse, seen on a roadmap<\/h2>\n

Lining up the initiatives shown in the original article chronologically makes the plan's current position clear. It is still at the 'training people' stage, and multiple gates remain before certified halal meat is shipped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Period<\/th>\nMeasure<\/th>\nStage<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
July 2, 2026<\/td>\nSheep breeding and husbandry technical training in Trung Khanh Vinh village (breeding-sheep selection, nutrition, barns, disease prevention)<\/td>\nHuman-resource development<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Within 2026<\/td>\nSelect representative farmers and build model bases<\/td>\nDemonstration<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
From 2027 onward<\/td>\nGradually expand intensive-rearing zones<\/td>\nRegional development<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2026-2030<\/td>\nAttract corporate investment into a halal-compliant slaughter and processing system; complete the production-to-sales chain<\/td>\nCommercialization<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

What to note is that the slaughter and processing steps, the core of halal compliance, slaughter and processing steps<\/strong> are at the 'attract corporate investment' phase -- that is, the party to carry them out is not yet decided. Because halal certification centers its review less on rearing method than on slaughter practice, process control and separation from non-halal goods, the plan only rides a commercial footing once a company that invests in a slaughterhouse appears. Put the other way, this is the entrance for outside players.<\/p>\n

How local stakeholders and domestic media are talking about it<\/h2>\n

The original article features Phan Dinh Thin, director of the Khanh Hoa livestock and veterinary department, and Nguyen Thai Binh, head of the department's livestock division. What catches the eye in the authority's account is the phrasing that they aim for a state in which 'farmers have technical guidance, there are companies to buy, and there are processing facilities.' It is told not as a story of raising individual farmers' skills, but as a blueprint that includes the exit (buyers and processing plants).<\/p>\n

The tone of domestic media holds both expectation and impatience. The business magazine VnBusiness, in an article titled 'A halal market of over US$10 trillion -- how long will Vietnam keep standing outside the net?', critically took up the current state of delayed entry relative to the potential. A government-affiliated science and technology journal also points out that what Vietnam lacks is not potential but 'the speed to turn potential into competitiveness.' Against a nationwide flag-waving, certified products and an export track record are still thin -- as an attempt to fill this gap from the production-area side, Khanh Hoa's move is in a position that readily draws attention within the country too.<\/p>\n

What it means for Japanese companies looking for halal ingredients<\/h2>\n

Within Japan, demand for halal compliance is piling up on three fronts: inbound food and lodging, in-flight meals, and food exports bound for the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Yet on the raw-material sourcing ground, suppliers of halal-certified meat -- goat and mutton in particular -- have been almost concentrated in certified plants in Australia and New Zealand. Few options means little room for price negotiation and little room for risk diversification.<\/p>\n

If Khanh Hoa's plan bears fruit, a halal-compliant goat and mutton production area is born within Asia, a short transport distance from Japan. From Vietnam, tariff frameworks such as the Japan-Vietnam EPA and the CPTPP are already usable, and there is room to load goat and mutton onto the trade and logistics channels built for seafood and chicken sourcing. Vietnamese livestock farming is now moving toward international standardization, with the chicken major Hung Nhon partnering with a European company (the article on chicken 'international standardization'<\/a>, detailed there), and a national animal-welfare roadmap is beginning to run for shrimp and pangasius (the article on the animal-welfare roadmap<\/a>) -- all steering at once toward 'selling by standards.' Halal is another standards strategy that belongs to that context.<\/p>\n

That said, there is nothing yet to buy at this point. It is at the early stage of training and model farms, and the timing for a certified slaughterhouse to operate is also undecided. Precisely for that reason, the move available now is not 'procurement' but 'relationship-building.' Concretely, the following three are conceivable.<\/p>\n