Tourists walk along a street selling food near Hanoi’s Hương Pagoda. (Photo: VNA)Hanoi (VNA) –Hanoi’s Department of Health will deploy mobile food testing labs to deterunsafe food sold at restaurants and street vendors where spring festivals takeplace, Nguyen Khac Hien, director of the department, has said.
A food testing lab stopped outside a restaurant in Hanoi (Photo: VNA)Interdisciplinary inspection teams, in cooperation with local authorities, willtake samples of food at food businesses operating at festivals for tests thismonth, according to Hien.
Those who were found to violate food safety and hygiene regulations will facefines and be forced to stop business. The Huong (Perfume) Pagoda Festival in MyDuc district, which welcomes tens of thousands of tourists each day during thefestival time, will be the first to be inspected this month, the officialadded.
The mobile testing labs, which could test a raw food sample for different kindsof chemicals or bacteria within 30 minutes or two hours at the longest, willhelp deterring violated businesses at the soonest time, he said on February 7.
Inside a mobile testing lab (Photo: VNA)The labs will ease difficulties of inspection work, he added. As usual, there aremany food vendors at festivals while the time of testing food at local labstook much time. When the authorised agencies receive food test results, a largeamount of food had been sold.
Previously, the department required all food businesses to sign commitment tofollow the regulations on food hygiene and safety.
Last weekend, an interdisciplinary inspection team from the departmentconducted an inspection on 23 food businesses at Va Temple Festival in Son Taytownship. All 10 samples of noodles and five samples of chili sauce met thefood hygiene and safety’s requirements. However, only 22 out of 55 bowls werefound to meet the hygiene.
The team gave warnings to these businesses. The festival welcomed nearly 1,000tourists each day.
Another inspection team also inspected two businesses at Soc Temple Festival inSoc Son district and two other businesses in Tay Ho Temple in Tay Ho district.Results showed that the preservation work of raw materials did not meet safetycriteria.
Last month, the Ministry of Health’s Food Hygiene and Safety Department has setup six teams and more than 5,100 groups to inspect food businesses in 42 citiesand provinces. More than 2,300 businesses were found to violate theregulations, paying the fines of nearly 8.2 billion VND (361,940 USD) in total.
As many as 22 businesses were forced to stop their operation and 414 kinds offood were seized and culled.-VNA
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