Hanoi City Police have prosecuted 8 defendants, including many quarantine officers, for being related to a line of slaughtering and consuming diseased pork smuggled into people's markets, wholesale markets and even school kitchens.
From the beginning of 2026 to now, the suspects have consumed about 3,600 diseased pigs (equivalent to nearly 300 tons). This meat is brought to wholesale markets, people's markets and sold to Cuong Phat Food Co., Ltd. This company has supplied food to some schools in Hanoi City.
The case of a line consuming hundreds of tons of diseased pork being discovered, including the meat entering schools, is not simply a violation in food business. It shows the breakdown in many links: From slaughtering, transportation, distribution to inspection and supervision. What is even more worrying is that dirty food does not stop at people's markets or roadside eateries, but has crept into the place that should be strictly protected: Schools.
Adults may still choose to eat or not eat. But students do not. They eat what the school puts into their daily meals. They cannot recognize which is safe meat and which is food at risk of harm.
How can dirty meat go through many stages of control to reach the school kitchen? If there is no laxity, irresponsibility, or even collusion, it is very difficult for that to happen. Then, this is no longer a common irresponsibility, but a manifestation of indifference to public health, to the safety of children.
For many years, the issue of food safety in collective kitchens, especially in schools, has always been warned. Processes are there, regulations are not lacking, and documents are also very complete. But what public opinion needs are not beautiful commitments in the file, but transparency in each stage of goods import, inspection, processing and supervision. We cannot let control stop at just the form, and only then frantically pursue responsibility when an incident occurs.
Dirty pork in schools, after all, is not just about food. It is a measure of public service responsibility, a limit on the ethics of business people, a warning about management loopholes that cannot be taken lightly. And above all, it is a matter directly related to children, who need to be protected first, not to become the ultimate burden bearer.
It is time not to just stop at familiar phrases such as "drawing experience" or "tightening management". Because after each case of dirty food being discovered, public opinion becomes angry, functional agencies intervene, and somewhere things gradually subside. But if the handling method is not deterrent enough, if responsibility is not clearly pointed out to each individual and each unit, then that subsidence is just a break before another recurrence.
