Food for thought
By Son Nguyen in HCMC
The Lunar New Year, or Tet, often invokes warm images of family reunions around an oven or in a dining room. It is a time for relaxation, for entertainment, for a rest after a year of hard work, and for many people, it is a time for indulging themselves in banquets of ample delicious foods. Nonetheless, it must be also a time to beware dangers associated with foods, as it is also a time of multiple food poisoning cases.
What are being reported on local media these days should trigger an alert, warning people of so many risks to 
their health, not only instantly as in the case of food poisoning, but also in the long term as in cases of cancers or other long illnesses attributed to chemicals contained in such foods.
And the warnings are striking clear for people to take heed.
Dozens of cases of dirty foods on sale or being processed or trafficked are being front-paged, although such cases are just the floating part of an iceberg that is ever swelling. From candies to jams, from cakes to meat, and from the north to the south and to all parts of the country, unhygienic food is posing a real deadly threat.
Vietnamnet is running a series of investigative stories, unveiling how special foods for Tet are being made with the least regard to hygiene regulations. In other words, says the online publication, there are simply no hygiene regulations.
The news website shows how Tet jams of various types are being processed at a private workshop in HCMC’s District 11. Coconut flesh and other materials are scattered all over the floor near a sewer hole, while huge tanks used for the fermentation process are full of flies and cockroaches and maggots. This workshop has been fined twice over recent weeks and has been suspended, but the owner still ignores the sanction, according to Vietnamnet.
The news website also shows a similar picture at another workshop processing dried beef in central coastal Danang City, where all devices and equipment in use are dirty.
Vnexpress recalls a food poisoning case still fresh in the memory, when over 200 people in Binh Thuan Province’s Bac Binh District were rushed to hospital a fortnight ago after eating bread with meat paste from a vendor. The paste has later been pinpointed as the culprit. After the incident, health inspectors this week have launched a probe into meat paste on sale in the city, and found a dozen types being sold without packages or brands or origins.
In many cases, consumers cannot trace the origin of food products they buy. Most major newspapers relate a case of over 17 tons of food and foodstuff uncovered at a house in Hanoi this Wednesday by environment police. Tuoi Tre says the foodstuffs, which are scantly packaged, are outdated and emit stinking odors, and bear brands in Chinese characters. On the same day, police also stopped a Hanoi-bound truck carrying 3.4 tons of chicken meat from Quang Ninh near the border with China.
In an inspection this week, food hygiene inspectors of Danang City found 32 out of 104 inspected cases skip hygiene regulations, according to Thanh Nien. Another inspection by the Ministry of Health found out 18 out of 19 establishments failed to observe hygiene rules, says Lao Dong.
While dirty foods could send diners to hospital immediately, hazardous additives and chemicals inside such foods may keep them long there for treatment. And such dangerous substances are awash on the market for use.
Le Doan Dien, chair of the Vietnam Food and Foodstuff Science and Technology Institute, is quoted by Tien Phong as saying the use of banned chemicals and additives has become widespread and is beyond control. He cites a case of industrial paint being used in glutinous rice. The newspaper says that State agencies are now unable to control the use of unregistered chemicals in foods.
Glutinous rice cakes are cooked with batteries to keep the color fresh; veggies are found to contain high residues of growth stimulants; and chicken are dyed with industrial coloring agents are just a few cases of high alarm. The list of illegal food trafficking, processing, and trading is too long to mention.
If any figure could be used to make the alarm sound more loudly, then a remark by Colonel Luong Minh Thao of the Environment Police Department could be a high pitch: “As Tet approaches, the amount of ‘dirty food’ increases by between 200% and 300%,” according to Tuoi Tre.
Given the worsening situation over foods, the time of Tet should also be a time of caution for food lovers. And it also gives the food for thought.
The Saigon Times Daily