Tiên Yên Hill Chicken
(Gà Đồi Tiên Yên)
Tien Yên is a small town in the province of Quảng Ninh. You can easily get there from Hạ Long City by travelling 70 kilometres north on National Highway 18. The journey may be long, but the end result is worth it because Tiên Yên has a wonderful speciality: hill-grazed chicken!
In Tiên Yên, this is a well-known speciality. Tiên Yên hill chicken is a local breed of chicken, raised and grazed on hillsides and mountains. The body of a chicken is globe-shaped, with a short foot and a tinge of yellow. Here they freely forage for food from insects, crickets, and ants… at night they climb up the tree to sleep. Being naturally grazed, Tiên Yên hill chicken here has a taste like no other. Due to being grazed naturally, and enjoying the products of heaven and earth, the chickens are happier, and healthier, so they produce tastier meat. Some believe this is due to lower cortisol levels, which can toughen up meat hence, creating a juicier texture. Of course, poultry that is raised on a higher-quality clean diet is also bound to taste better.
Raising livestock on pasture rather than in confinement on factory farms has various environmental, animal, and human benefits.
Tiên Yên provides the market with approximately 12-15 million hill chickens worth 1.5 trillion VND per year, transforming free-range chicken farming into a viable source of income for locals.
In 2011, the National Office of Intellectual Property at the Ministry of Science and Technology issued Tiên Yên hill chicken a certificate of trademark registration. It was Việt Nam’s first trademarked and monopolized livestock product. In the market, however, Tiên Yên hill-grazed chicken can be difficult to spot. The cooperative concept is restricted, and there is a lack of connectivity between farmers, cooperatives, and enterprises, resulting in a lack of trademark control, traceability, pricing issues, and consistency.
