Improving public responsibility for the assurance of food safety

Responding to the Action Month of Food Safety (May – 2016), provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development in collaboration with Department of Health has organized many activities to improve the community's responsibility for the Food safety assurance. Particularly, Department of Agriculture and Rural Development has examined, controlled the observance of regulations on food safety in production facilities and businesses of forest-agricultural and aquatic products, cold storages, collective kitchens; the use of banned chemicals, drugs, plant protection drugs in bean sprout production; veterinary hygiene at cattle and poultry slaughterhouses, businesses and stores of animal products on the districts, towns and city in the province.

During the Action Month of Food Safety, functional forces checked 442 facilities consisting of production, processing, slaughtering; markets, stalls, cold storages ... of animal products. 83% inspected facilities met food safety criteria.

Along with the Action Month of Food Safety, Department of Agriculture and Rural Development has implemented the monitoring phase 1 in 2016; monitored, checked banned substances. Accordingly, the authorities tested 21 markets, 4 supermarkets and 4 stores in the province with totally 404 samples of agricultural products. The results showed that the microbial infection of food was still relatively high, namely, 61/253 samples were infected with microbes, including 50/253 samples of salmonella, accounting for 19.77%; 3/10 soaked bamboo shoots samples were contaminated with Auramine O, accounting for 30%...

Reported by Quynh Nhien – Translated by Ngoc Huynh