Food inspectors check the quality of pork in a wholesale market in Hoang Mai District. (Photo: hanoimoi.com.vn)Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - Hundreds of food inspectorsoften start their work when Hanoi sleeps, working to ensure food safety andhygiene for consumers.
Pham Van Tuan regularly wakes up at midnight to inspectslaughterhouses and wholesale markets in Hanoi’s Thanh Oai district.
The inspections start at 1am and finish at about 6am everyday.
Tuan, head of the district’s Livestock and Animal HealthOffice, said managing slaughterhouses was not easy because not all owners ofslaughterhouses complied with regulations on animal’s origins.
Some slaughterhouses failed to show the origin of theiranimals and others didn't cooperate with inspectors when they were foundrunning abattoirs without licences, he added.
Nguyen Van Phan, another employee of the office, said he andhis colleagues were used to working day and night.
“We have to do our job at any time after we receive reportsof ill or dead animals,” he said.
They had to identify the cause of the illness or death andreport to the office for a prompt response, he said.
“We have a few days off each year,” he added, Ha Noi Moi (NewHanoi) online newspaper reported.
Phan only had one day off during the 2020 Tet (Lunar NewYear) holidays, he said.
Nguyen Ngoc Son, head of the city’s Livestock and AnimalHealth Division, said food inspectors had to work at full capacity to check thequality of food before holidays like Tet, due to the increased amount ofanimals being transported from nearby provinces to Hanoi.
The job forced the inspectors to directly contact animals,including ill animals, leading to a very high risk of contracting diseases, hesaid.
In Bac Tu Liem district, Tran Hoang Bach, a worker of theHanoi Agro-Forestry-Fisheries Quality Assurance Division said currently, theamount of farm produce from provinces and cities transported to Hanoi daily wasvery large.
However, not all of it had a clear origin, he said.
Inspectors had to check the quality of vegetables and fruitfrom midnight before traders sell the products in the early morning every dayto ensure only safe and hygiene farm produce was sold, he said.
Lieutenant Pham Van Tuong, a police officer of NaturalResources and Environment Office under Hanoi’s Police Department said theoffice aimed to strictly handle violations but still create conditions fortraders to do business.
Le Trung Kien, head of the Inspector Office under theagro-forestry-fisheries quality assurance division, said there were many smalltraders and it was difficult to control the origin of farm produce andlivestock.
He said he and his colleagues were still determined toinspect and handle all violations to ensure only safe and clear-origin foodswere sold.
"However, strict but soft," he added.
If inspectors found a slaughterhouse being operated without abusiness licence, they would help them prepare documents to get a licence, hesaid.
If inspectors found a small trader failed to comply withregulations, the first thing they would do is explain why they had to followregulations, and punishment would come later, he said.
Ta Van Tuong, deputy head of the city’s Agricultural andRural Development Department, said to ensure agricultural and aquatic productswere not contaminated with microorganisms or banned chemicals, the departmenthad conducted a lot of inspections, both planned and random.
Statistics from the department reveal 174 individuals werefined nearly 1.4 billion VND (60,200 USD) for selling farm produce, poultry andanimal without clear origin last year, with the number of violations about 10percent lower than in 2018./.
VNA
