The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training (GDĐT) has just issued a document requesting educational institutions to strengthen food safety assurance, which sets out many specific requirements for management, publicity and supervision of semi-boarding meals.
Accordingly, schools must assign leaders and school health staff to directly supervise the entire food supply chain, meals brought into schools; control the quality of meals, menus and nutritional dosage.
Notably, educational institutions must be transparent and publicize information daily to parents through bulletin boards, websites, technology applications or online contact groups.
The public content includes the unit providing meals, ingredients, food images, import invoices, menus and actual meal trays images of students. This is considered a basis for parents to monitor and supervise meals at school.
The Department also requests schools to receive and handle feedback from parents within 24 hours.
Parents are allowed to participate in meal supervision
According to the guidance, the Parents' Representative Board is facilitated to participate in monitoring food sources, the process of dividing meals, verifying and evaluating the quality of meals with teachers and students.
In appropriate conditions, the Parents' Representative Board can participate in rapid inspection of high-risk raw material and food groups and inspect the processing area.
For schools using meals from outside, the Parents' Representative Board can request the head of the educational institution to take the lead in organizing an inspection team directly at the processing place of the supplier.
In addition, schools must develop procedures for preventing, responding to and handling food safety incidents, and at the same time organize large-scale food poisoning response drills for 30 or more people. This must be completed in the third quarter of 2026.
Do not let one unit supply too many schools
For People's Committees of wards, communes, and special zones, the Department of Education and Training requires a substantive assessment of the capacity of units providing meals and collective kitchens serving semi-boarding.
The assessment must consider the scale of the processing facility, equipment, means of transportation, personnel, experience and responsiveness corresponding to the number of schools and the number of meals expected to be provided.
In particular, the Department requests not to let one unit supply too many educational institutions, exceeding their actual capacity. This is to avoid the situation of delayed meal supply or having to hire or ask other units to supply again but not ensuring quality and food safety as initially committed.
The Department of Education and Training also requests schools to urgently review and complete administrative and legal procedures with units providing meals, collective kitchens, and canteens to organize semi-boarding meals as soon as possible, in accordance with the reality of each unit.
