Ensuring food hygiene and safety throughout the Lunar New Year

To ensure food hygiene and safety at the end of the year and the 2024 Lunar New Year, the province’s functional branches and localities have closely controlled food production, processing, and commercial premises, so ensuring that people enjoy Tet safely.

The multidisciplinary inspection team examined the activities of safeguarding food hygiene and safety in the Ha Hoa area.

In the last days of the year, the multidisciplinary Steering Committee on Food Safety in districts, cities, and towns increased public propaganda and legal education efforts, as well as investigated local food and service enterprises and catering services. The Steering Committee in Ha Hoa district coordinated the distribution of 20 news, articles, and reports via mass media and grassroots radio systems, as well as 25 rounds of banners and slogans on food safety messages during the Lunar New Year and the Spring Festival season of 2024. The district has formed an inspection team comprising ten food and catering service enterprises. During the inspection, the businesses produced documents and papers pertaining to food business activities, certificates of knowledge of food safety, health examination certifications, commitment to ensuring food safety, etc. At the same time, the businesses are completely equipped with shelves, and food is stored in a cold environment in accordance with the manufacturer’s specifications... Communes and municipalities have formed 20 inspection teams to check 137 enterprises, attaining 100%. There is no foundation for dealing with administrative offenses.

Violating institution owners aggressively destroy broken, moldy, or low quality items.

Viet Tri City now has 1,737 enterprises that produce food for processing, trade, catering, and boarding. The Steering Committees of communes and wards formed 23 multidisciplinary delegations to assess 26 facilities, 22 of which passed and four failed. In 2023, Thanh Mieu Ward Steering Committee inspected 103 enterprises, seized and destroyed 293 goods, and punished five instances totaling 12 million VND.

The province’s multidisciplinary inspection team, lead by the Department of Industry and Trade, inspected Go! Supermarket. This is one of Viet Tri City’s retail complexes, thus food safety and quality control are prioritized. Ms. Le Thi Thu Trang, Director of Go!, stated: "Although the number of items rose by 20% over the same period last year, the supermarket implemented a price lock scheme for 10,000 fast-moving consumer products. Furthermore, focusing on showcasing the province’s OCOP".

The Department of Industry and Trade’s multidisciplinary inspection team visited Go! (Thanh Mieu ward, Viet Tri city) to ensure food cleanliness and safety.

Dieu Quang Dao, Deputy Director of the Food Safety and Health Department, stated that in the last month of the year, the province formed three interdisciplinary inspection teams to oversee the job of maintaining food hygiene and safety in 13 districts, cities, and towns. Products of unknown origin will be destroyed upon scrutiny. Products without secondary labels, that have expired, or are not of assured quality will be subject to administrative penalty for a set period of time, which facility owners must overcome in order to achieve maximum customer advantages."

Ensuring food hygiene and safety is a crucial activity that must be done on a regular and ongoing basis in order to manage hazards to customers' health, particularly during vacations and Tet. The authorities propose that each consumer be aware of the need of proactively boycotting while also coordinating with the authorities in discovering and responding to food hygiene and safety issues.

Thuy Trang