At the question-and-answer session of the 25th session of the 16th Hanoi People's Council on July 9, Vice Chairman of the Hanoi People's Committee Vu Thu Ha clarified many contents of concern to voters and delegates regarding food safety assurance (FS) in the area.
Accordingly, Ms. Vu Thu Ha informed that the city will pilot a model of organizing boarding meals in the direction of focusing on ready-made meals at schools and hospitals, in order to strictly control the input to processing stage.
Vice Chairman of the City People's Committee Vu Thu Ha said that Hanoi is implementing instructions from the Central Government and the City Party Committee on improving the quality of school meals.
It is expected that from the 2025 - 2026 school year, the city will pilot a boarding meal model for students in the form of organizing centralized meals.
This is to control the entire process from input materials, processing, preservation to transportation and distribution to schools. The city will build a menu suitable for each age, ensuring nutrition, food safety and hygiene, while minimizing intermediaries that pose potential risks to safety" - Ms. Ha emphasized.
This model will be expanded and piloted in a number of major hospitals, with the goal of improving the quality of patient care and ensuring food safety and hygiene in hospital meals.
Along with that, Hanoi City will also deploy food commercial areas according to regional standards, with strict control over the origin of raw materials, processing processes and environmental sanitation. The city will also build food streets that meet food safety standards, with criteria issued by the city.
The Vice Chairman of the Hanoi People's Committee said that these new models will affect many groups of people in the area.
"We hope that every citizen of the capital will join hands to ensure food safety, be a smart consumer, choose foods of clear origin, and resolutely boycott dirty, counterfeit, and poor quality foods" - Ms. Ha emphasized.
At the question-and-answer session, Vice Chairman of Hanoi People's Committee Vu Thu Ha said that Hanoi currently has about 80,000 food production, processing and trading establishments, managed by the three sectors of Health, Agriculture - Environment and Industry and Trade.
From 2023 to present, the city has established nearly 1,000 food inspection and inspection teams and fined violations of more than 52 billion VND, of which the first 5 months of 2025 alone were 10 billion VND. The city has prosecuted 11 cases related to food safety violations.
The Vice Chairman of Hanoi affirmed that food safety assurance has had positive changes, the awareness of food production and trading organizations and individuals has improved, and there are no major food poisoning cases.
The city will continue to review the management model, decentralize food safety work according to the two-level government model, ensuring that cadres have sufficient capacity.
At the same time, it will strengthen inspection and inter-sectoral coordination to handle violations, while applying information technology, building clean food maps and smart instructions. At the same time, it is recommended to amend legal documents to suit reality and ensure closer management.
