Several waves of HPAI caused by the H5N1 strain have swept through Viet Nam over the past three years and Vietnamese authorities have plans to restructure the poultry industry. These plans are costly, likely to have negative impacts on smallholder producers and will not necessarily achieve the desired objective of eliminating HPAI from Viet Nam. As an alternative, FAOís PPLPI aims to assess mechanisms designed to overcome serious incentive problems for product quality improvement, reducing disease and food safety risks, while increasing smallholder incomes and reducing public expenditure for conventional surveillance and control measures. In particular, we want to explore the potential of the demand side of the poultry market to achieve higher food safety standards, thereby displacing costly and often inefficient government intervention. Here we briefly describe the main activities and initial findings of two studies that looked at (1) the pattern of farm gate trade, and (2) the trade pattern of the main live bird markets around Ha Noi. The overall objective of these studies was to obtain background information required for the planning of a feasibility study of establishing certified smallholder poultry value chains to supply poultry consumers of Ha Noi with safe poultry.