Dương Anh Đức, Vice Chairman of the HCM City People's Committee speaks at a meeting with the city’s Food Safety and Hygiene Management Board on March 2. Photo:sggp.org.vn

HCM CITY--- The city will review regulations and draw up a specific plan as well as an implementation road map to better monitor food hygiene and safety.

Instructions to this effect were given by Dương Anh Đức, Vice Chairman of the HCM City People Committee, in a meeting with the Food Safety and Hygiene Management Board on March 2.

Đức also directed the board to set up a working group responsible for coordinating with relevant departments and agencies to remove difficulties and legal problems in doing the work.

The plan must be completed by the third quarter of 2022 so that the administration can propose the establishment of a specialised food safety agency under the People's Committee to the City Party Committee and the Prime Minister, he said.

According to the board’s report for 2021, its staff visited and conducted inspections of nearly 20,000 food production and trading establishments. After discovering many violations, administrative fines totalling tens of billions of dong were issued and 80 tonnes of products were ordered destroyed.

The board also coordinated with an interdisciplinary inspection team to prevent and control livestock and poultry diseases in the city, detecting 40 violations of veterinary regulations during transportation, the report said. VNS