HCM CITY—The Ministry for Agriculture and Rural Development has urged authorities of Can Tho City and Vinh Long Province to destroy all imported red-ear turles (Trachemys scripta elegans) by September 20.

In an official dispatch issued on Thursday, Minister Cao Duc Phat asked Can Tho and Vinh Long People's Committees to demand that Can Tho Seafood Import Joint-Stock Company (CASEAMEX) destroy all 40 tonnes of the red-ear turtles, which were imported from the US in April.

Under the license the MARD's Department of Aquatic Resource Cultivation and Breeding granted to CASEAMEX in March, the imported turtles must be used for food processing but not for breeding.

However, the red-ear turtles have not been used for food, which is a violation of the import license from CASEAMEX.

On August 10, MARD's Aquatic Resource Exploitation and Protection Department asked the company to re-export or destroy all the red-ear turles across the country by August 31.

But the department's request has had no impact on the situation.

In the past couple of weeks, the turtle has been bred in other Mekong provinces such as An Giang, Dong Thap, Ca Mau, Ben Tre and Soc Trang instead of Vinh Long.

Twenty red-ear turtles were seized from breeding ponds in Soc Trang Province and 34 others were confiscated from an ornamental fish farm in Ben Tre Province.

The turtle is native to North America and was included on the list of the world's 100 worst-invasive species by the Invasive Species Specialist Group, a global network of scientific and policy experts on invasive species, organised under the auspices of the Species Survival Commission of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The turtle invades the habitat of indigenous tortoises. It kills all smaller aquatic creatures and destroys all plants at a rate faster than the yellow snail because it is much bigger than the latter.

In-house breeding of the turtle could result in the spread of Salmonelia virus, which causes diarrhoea and typhoid.

MARD has also asked provincial authorities of Can Tho and Vinh Long to supervise the destruction of the red-ear turtles so that it will not enter or spread to other localities. —VNS