The Hà Nội Market Management Force inspects food for the Lunar New Year festival. — VNA/VNS Photo Quốc Lũy

HÀ NỘI — As Tết (Lunar New Year holiday) approaches, Hà Nội, a city that consumes vast amounts of food every day, is facing a growing tension between business interests and public health safety.

Market pressures and surging shopping demand are pushing some establishments to relax procedures or even accept violations to maximise profits, a trend that makes any lapse in production, storage or distribution a direct threat to the safety of the capital’s meals.

In the first week of last month, a surprise inspection at Viet Chef Joint Stock Company in the Lai Xá Industrial Zone, Tây Tựu Ward, by Hà Nội Inter-agency Food Safety Inspection Team No 1, uncovered numerous shortcomings.

Viet Chef’s General Director, Nguyễn Đức Lâm, said: "The enterprise has a mission to provide smart cooking solutions, helping housewives cook faster and tastier, and the company always complies with food hygiene and safety regulations to ensure the best product quality."

However, the inspection found that one-way production processes in food processing were not up to standard, while storage areas for raw materials, packaging, and finished products were chaotic, posing a high risk of cross-contamination.

In the cold storage, the team discovered many raw materials of unclear origin, lacking Vietnamese-language supplementary labels despite being imports. Some materials were even past their expiry dates, yet stored alongside production materials. The company had also arbitrarily coded ingredient names using abbreviations on supplementary labels.

Another inspection in Hưng Đạo Commune in mid-January this year uncovered a series of violations at the household business of Vương Đình Dũng in Village 5, which specialises in vermicelli production. At the time of inspection, the owner presented a business registration certificate and a food production commitment, but a deeper review of production processes and legal documents revealed numerous concerning inadequacies.

The facility lacked health check certificates and food safety training confirmations for both the owner and staff directly involved in production, along with missing records proving input and output product quality and absent documentation verifying the origin of the main ingredient and food packaging.

Violations were not limited to production. Retail distribution also showed gaps. At a supermarket on Lý Nam Đế Street in Hoàn Kiếm Ward, the inspection team noted a frozen food display cabinet without a lid, substandard temperatures and other breaches related to labelling and origin certification.

Keeping public health

Pursuant to Decision No. 6434/QĐ-UBND of the Hà Nội People’s Committee, the city has established three inter-agency inspection teams focusing on key Tết items such as cakes and sweets, meat and meat products as well as catering services.

Đặng Thanh Phong, head of the Food Safety and Hygiene Sub-department, said the teams conduct both planned inspections with ward-level food safety steering committees and surprise checks at facilities. The aim is to reveal the true state of food safety and hygiene efforts, preventing businesses from tidying up records or staging last-minute clean-ups.

From the inspection findings, Phong warned against a law-breaking complacency mindset in some production and trading establishments. Owners must maintain regular workshop hygiene and prioritise food safety across all operations. Violations will be severely penalised, with offender identities publicly disclosed.

“Additionally, consumers should act as inspectors, scrutinising packaging and expiry dates and firmly boycotting products with signs of tampering. For school canteens, coordinated involvement from school management, parents and local authorities is needed to oversee both meal quality and portion sizes,” he said.

Alongside resolute and ongoing efforts by authorities, Tết food producers and traders must raise their compliance with safety regulations, never trading short-term profits for their brand and reputation by releasing substandard and risky products onto the market.

In addition, the Ministry of Health has issued a document to provincial health departments urging stronger measures to prevent food poisoning in the coming period. To proactively prevent food poisoning during the Lunar New Year and Spring Festival season this year, the ministry requires localities to develop realistic food safety plans, particularly noting risks from toxic mushrooms, naturally poisonous plants and animals and high-consumption festival items.

Inspections should target collective kitchens, ready-meal processors, catering services, street food as well as bottled drinking water producers and traders. Facilities failing safety standards must face severe penalties, suspension and public violation notices to warn the public.

The ministry also calls for intensified food safety communication, advising people to use foods of clear origin, avoid expired or suspicious items and refrain from foraging or using unfamiliar plants and animals that risk poisoning. It further urges stronger inter-agency coordination on agricultural produce safety and alcohol production and trading management, as well as preparation of response teams, medicines and contingency plans for poisoning incidents, while investigating causes to prevent recurrence. — VNS