The 2014 Tet (Lunar New Year) holiday is approaching. This is the period customers pay more attention to food safety and hygiene. Authorities at all levels of the province have planned to ensure food safety and hygiene during Tet. But, customers also need to be intelligent in selecting safe food for their health… 

Binh Duong’s inter-sectoral inspection delegation making an inspection tour of food safety and hygiene at Thu Dau Mot market

During Tet, there is a sharp increase in the demand for food consumption compared to normal days. Food providers has increased the amount of products at the demand. This is also a chance for the rampancy of fakes products and poor quality ones, affecting customers’ health, according to the local functional agencies.

There are also a lot of festivals before, during and after Tet. Hence, street eateries will loom large across the province. Concerns about food safety and hygiene are also increasing.

Provincial Steering Board for Food Safety and Hygiene has made a plan on “Ensuring food safety and hygiene during the 2014 Tet festival and the 2014 Lady Thien Hau Temple festival”.

Accordingly, the Steering Board will carry out a peak program to ensure food safety for the community’s health, take innitiative in preventive measures to have no food-poisoning cases; speed up propaganda work to raise public awareness of food safety and tighten control over food safety.

Inspections will focus on establishments processing and trading high-risk food: fresh food, confectionary, beverage; restaurants and food storages, thereby opportunely discovering, preventing and dealing with cases violating food safety.

From January 7 to 17, the province’s functional agencies will make inspection tours of food contamination at wholesale markets in Thu Dau Mot, Di An, Thuan An, Tan Uyen…Provincial inter-sectoral inspection delegations will concentrate on checking food safety conditions, making quick tests for food safety indexes of borax, formol...for Tet’s normal food such as fruits, Chinese sausage, noodle, confectionary, wine…

Nguyen Ngoc Hung, Deputy Head of provincial Department of Food Safety and Hygiene recommended that customers should carefully watch the brand name and origin of food and other elements to be able to safely select and use food; be vigilant over poor-quality products; use cooked food and boiling water, watch their hands before processing food and after eating them.

Food providers should not use harmful industrial food coloring suppliers and additives outside the list of additives permitted in food processing…

Reported by Cam Ly-Translated by K.T