Previously, as the inter-sectional inspection team of food safety and hygiene is present at the local provincial market place, approximately 80% of checked cases were recorded as breaches of administrative regulations; however, such ratio has been dramatically reduced recently across 3 market places of Thu Dau Mot, Bung, and Lai Thieu.Robust transformationThat was how Deputy Director of Provincial Department of Market Control, Mr. Nguyen Thanh Danh evaluated the checking-up results regarding food safety and hygiene across market places of Thu Dau Mot, Bung, and Lai Thieu in recent two days. A merchant voluntarily discards the disqualified foods in witness of market control unit Accordingly, at Thu Dau Mot market place, the circumstances of muddy roads across meat and seafood shops have been remedied.Under the force of regulations extended by market management, awareness of merchants has been improved, making buyers feel easier on accessing the areas.At instant food stalls near the clock tower of Thu Dau Mot market place, vendors have made use of glass to store their foods in eye-catching and hygiene lots.Similarly, at Lai Thieu and Bugn market places, the seafood and meat stalls have been separated from pollution sources.Besides, the market places have been tidied up with stricter penalties against acts of littering.All the stalls have been certified with certifications of sterilized with majority of merchants observing clear posting of prices.Mrs. Do Thi Minh, a grocer on Vo Tanh Street of Bung market place in Thuan An Town said: “Recently, we have been checked by market management forces. In my opinion, we must follow the rules in business and selling of commodities from clear origin and price listing accessible to buyers.”Danh said: “For the time, awareness of food safety and hygiene has been elevated among producers and sellers, especially in some market places. Such transformation was robustly effective under Ordinance on Food Safety and Hygiene effective from August 2013 together with more concentration and care for propaganda on food safety and hygiene than before. The checking-up has been planned on progress to robustly transform the awareness of enterprises and consumers.”Drawbacks to be resolvedIn reality of checking-up, some merchants buy in mass and sell in retails including confectionary, dried and processed foods of unclear origin without expiration dates let alone those with toxic risks to human.Some merchants may list the prices for granted or on unclear markings and boards.“Buyers can hardly tell the price although we have made our instructions to such sellers,” informed an unnamed officer of market control unit.“Foods of disallowed additives or pesticide residues remain in some places around because of retail merchants on whom we only apply warnings and administrative sanction. On the other hand, majority of the cases were without declaration of food origin; thus, we could not resolve the problems at the root,” explained Danh. The other issues were that the functional units failed to confiscate the goods for failing to provide evidence through pending sample tests.As a matter of fact, the sellers would hide away the discovered goods before the functional units returning to provide evidence.“From now on to near Tet, we shall conduct more inspection together with propaganda. Accordingly, we shall concentrate on punishing the sellers for not proving the labels, producers, date of manufactured, date of expiration, weight, and ingredients as required by the laws. Concurrently, tight monitoring shall be conducted to discover banned additives used in foods to protect the consumers,” said Danh.Many shall be in concern for the on-going circumstances irrespective of increasing awareness.Aside from sole discretion of consumers, they are still dependent on control of functional units regarding food safety and hygiene.Reported by Truc Huynh – Translated by Vi Bao