Serving safe and quality lunches for students at the Đoàn Kết Primary School in Long Biên District in Hà Nội. — VNA/VNS Photo Thanh Tùng

HÀ NỘI — Food safety management in schools is always a concern for schools’ managing boards and parents.

The proportion of students at all levels in Hà Nội registered for meals at schools is increasing. Many schools have invested in kitchen facilities to ensure food safety and hygiene and established a food supervision team with the participation of students' parents. However, unfortunate incidents with school meals still occur.

Recently, maggots were found in the meals of students of the Education Science Experimental School in the capital's Ba Đình District, causing great public concern.

According to the meal supplier Hà Thành Company, the lorry the firm uses transports many different types of goods, so before transporting the school meals, the food container was not cleaned and the lids of the food boxes were broken, causing other items to contaminate the meals.

Although the incident was discovered early and did not cause any harm, questions about procedures to ensure food safety and hygiene in school meals were raised.

Before that, on September 9 and 10 this year at Tiên Dương Primary School in Đông Anh District, dozens of students suffered food poisoning during lunch and had symptoms of abdominal pain, vomiting and dizziness.

Healthy authorities determined the cause to be microbiological. Inspectors discovered that the warehouse of the food supplier Vũ Quỳnh Company was near toilets, the food processing area was contaminated with insects and the water used for food preparation was drilled well water and had not been tested as per regulations.

While such incidents are rare, they have caused many parents to worry.

Having two children registered for lunch at school, Vũ Minh Nguyệt, who lives in Tây Hồ District, said that despite the school introducing the food suppliers and offering joint inspections with the school administration, she still feels unsure about the school meals.

"Parents also struggle to thoroughly and regularly control the quality of the food entering the school kitchen because the inspection is only sensory. I just hope the school and the food supplier’s processing puts students' health first so that parents can be assured when their children are at school every day," Nguyệt said.

Some parents, like Trần Thị Bình in Cầu Giấy District, have chosen to pick up their children from school at lunch time every day due to concerns about school meals.

Close inspection

With the largest educational system in the country, Hà Nội has nearly 2,200 school kitchens, so food safety and hygiene in the kitchens is a focus of leaders of the Hà Nội Department of Education and Training (DoET) and schools.

Phạm Xuân Tiến, deputy director of the Hà Nội DoET, said the DoET saw ensuring the safety of students as its most important task, including safety for boarding meals.

Every year, the DoET works with the Department of Health and district authorities to regularly and irregularly inspect meals for students at schools, including the food supply process.

The DoET holds the school principal responsible for controlling the food entry process.

Nguyễn Thị Liễu, principal of the Đoàn Kết Primary School in Long Biên District, said that to serve more than 1,000 students who eat at the school, the school has carefully selected reputable food suppliers. Not only based on documents and food safety accreditation certificates issued by the authorities, the school administrators and parents also inspect the place of food production and processing.

"The school also keeps a close watch on daily menus and runs nutritional software according to the advice of supplier, but most importantly, we work based on the assessment and comments of students and students' parents. If there is a lot of food left by students, the school will adjust immediately but still have to balance nutrition, ensuring the students’ health," Liễu said.

The reception of food in the morning is also seriously and fully implemented by Gia Quất Primary School in Long Biên District. The inspection of food is done regularly by the school, with clear requirements for food suppliers.

"The administrators and teachers are always observing and understanding students’ and parents' feedback on the quality of school meals to make timely adjustments. Besides teaching knowledge, taking care of students’ health are equally important,” said Nguyễn Thị Phượng, principal of Gia Quất Primary School. — VNS