Safe meals require greater efforts

Hanoi (VNA) – The entire political system is working together with people nationwide to ensure their daily meals are nutritious and with safe ingredients as alarm bells have recently been ringing for unhygienic food.

As many unhygienic food cases have been exposed by the media, sparking grave concerns among people, the new Cabinet, which was formed at the 11 th meeting of the 13 th National Assembly, discussed the issue with authorities of all 63 cities and provinces via a teleconference.

Chairing the event, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc admitted State management agencies’ failure in tracking unhygienic food, pledging the Government will act for people’s safe meals.

For their part, State management agencies blamed many localities for negligence in promptly dealing with unhygienic food.

They also referred to the high risks of more unhygienic food coming from household-based food producers and traders which number millions across the country.

Many such producers and traders have failed to meet hygiene standards required for material inputs, breeding and planting processes, and even processing lines, they said.

Nguyen Thi Kim Tien, who heads the Ministry of Health – the Government’s food safety watchdog, however, raised the fact that when an unsafe food-related case is brought to light, only the doer is punished, not the monitoring agency or on-duty officials.

Meanwhile, Secretary of the Ho Chi Minh Party Committee Dinh La Thang frankly pointed to the possible conspiring between the State management agencies and traders due to giant profits coming from the trade of unsafe food.
For their part, localities named a lack of a funding source and a sufficient and qualified staff to aid the regular monitoring of food safety.

They stressed that social-political mass organisations and locals have yet to be given a chance to play a role in monitoring unhygienic food, especially right at production sites.

Trinh Van Chien, Secretary of the Party Committee of north-central Thanh Hoa province, which is one of the most populous localities in the country, asked central agencies to display their responsibility for managing substances and antibiotics which are banned for use in breeding and planting, and also imported food.

“We cannot let such a huge issue that directly affects people’s meals go with no one being held responsible,” Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc stated.-VNA