Overcoming shortcomings in food safety and hygiene

Over the past years, the management, check and surveillance work of food safety and hygiene in the country has gained active changes. However, almost all of the people are experiencing anxiety as a series of violations on food safety such as toxic substance-contained melon seeds, addled fat, luminescent sweets have been reported these days.

According to the report of provinces, the rate of food poisoning was 6.08 per 100,000 inhabitants on average in 2009 while the rate of fatality due to food poisoning is 0.04 for every 100,000 ones. The number of food poisoning cases continued to rise in the first months of this year. By the end of June, the whole country had 88 cases, affecting 2,929 people, including 33 deaths. In comparison with last year’s figures, the number of cases, affected people and deaths increased ranging from 8.9 per cent to 35.4 per cent. Along with the situation, during the action month for food safety and hygiene launched from May 15 to June 15, provincial and municipal authorities from 63 localities had set up 19,505 inspection teams to work on more than 210,000 production and establishments. As results, the teams detected over 52,000 production, processing and trading establishments which violated regulations on ensuring food safety and security, accounting for 24.75 per cent, focusing on mainly in districts. Of the total, 40 per cent-50 per cent violations are involved in infrastructure conditions, 30 per cent-35 per cent did not trained on food safety and 30 per cent-40 per cent did not made health examination for employees who directly get in touch with foodstuff. Almost all of violations were in street restaurants, collective kitchens, wedding parties, and particularly at production establishment of bottled water accounting for 67.11 per cent. In some localities such as Hanoi, Bac Giang, Quang Ninh, Lang Son, 100 per cent of inspected establishments were found to violate the regulations.

Nguyen Cong Khan, head of the food safety and hygiene department, said that there are hundreds of industrial parks, processing zones and open economic areas in 63 provinces and cities nationwide. With the rapid pace of urbanization annually, it is forecast that by 2020, the urban population will reach 45 million. Meanwhile, infrastructures, restaurants and social services have not yet developed on a par with the growth pace, resulting in the rising risk of food poisoning and infectious diseases via food. Besides, some customs in Vietnam relating to food processing and habits of food and drink is also a cause of food poisoning.

Khau added another cause leading to the food poisoning is the loose management of raw materials, seriously a large volume of unhygienic foodstuff imported from China. This makes food poisoning a threat to the people especially laborers. In addition, producers, processors and traders of foodstuff have not yet fulfilled their responsibilities in ensuring the hygiene to products. Lots of addictives and chemicals for foodstuff processing are sold in mass in markets without origin, but authorities have not yet taken drastic measures to control the situation. The techniques for food processing in many places are backwards and on small scale, which limit remarkably food safety and hygiene. Moreover, Vietnam has not had a comprehensive management system of food safety and hygiene ranging from central to local levels. An expert said that as looking at Vietnam’s food safety and hygiene work, it is very difficult to see the bandmaster. As a result, if there is any case, production establishment and resident are victims while no authorized agency had taken the responsibility.

Meanwhile, the human source for inspection and surveillance work is still thin and a majority of them lack of professional knowledge to capably and resolutely punish violators. The biggest exist which has received strong protest from the public over the past time is that the health sector has not yet carried out regularly inspections instead of promoting separate campaign or following some case such as the case of melamine-contained milk, toxic melon seeds and luminescent sweets. The current sanctions are not enough strong against violations on food safety and hygiene. Although the number of violations is continuously detected, the punishment is limited and not enough heavy particularly in localities. According to the statistics, among 52,000 establishments found to violate regulations on food safety and hygiene nationwide, the rate of establishments having not been punished accounted for up to 54.28 per cent.

In front of the situation, it is necessary to build strong sanctions to fight violators. The team of inspectors and related authorities need to speed up the assessment and granting of certificate on food safety and hygiene for business establishments. The food safety is a long-term issue, thus, it is vital to educate the people to themselves become smart consumers in parallel with raising the awareness of producers, processors and traders of foodstuff. Authorities also need to pay attention to the import of materials to serve agriculture and seafood. The department of food safety and hygiene must boost the training of skills and professional knowledge for its workers as well as those in localities; cooperate with provincial and municipal authorities to train more human source for the work to ensure it better. – VCCI

Tags: food safety and hygiene

Posted by VBN on Aug 14 2010. Filed under Food & Beverage, Health & Drugs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry