Schools increase, food safety pressure increases
On July 17, the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Food Safety coordinated with the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training to organize a training course on ensuring food safety for schools in Ho Chi Minh City for the 2025-2026 school year.
According to Ms. Pham Khanh Phong Lan - Director of the Department of Food Safety of Ho Chi Minh City, ensuring food safety in schools currently plays an extremely important role, especially in the context of Ho Chi Minh City having just had administrative changes, expanding both area and population.
This has led to a significant increase in the number of schools, from more than 2,300 schools now to about 3,500 schools, with a total of 2.6 million students, which can be said to be the largest in the country.
Previously, the unit only managed more than 2,000 schools. When the number of schools and students increases sharply, the risk of food safety is also extremely high.
Ms. Huynh Le Nhu Trang - Deputy Director of the Department of Education and Training of Ho Chi Minh City commented that providing knowledge, updating information, and new legal documents related to food safety, preventing food poisoning, as well as health care and school nutrition processes for leaders, principals, deputy principals, and school health workers is necessary and urgent at the present time.
The total number of participants is about 3,500 people, divided into 7 classes in 3 areas: Saigon ward, Ba Ria ward, Vung Tau ward.
Food safety problem after merger
Ms. Phong Lan added that the training content includes all-encompassing training from operating the kitchen in accordance with standards, control processes, to how to choose clean and guaranteed ingredients. After the training, the unit organized regular inspections, combined with surprise inspections conducted by food safety management teams in the area. All schools must be inspected.
If errors are detected, the unit will remind to rectify. If they repeat the offense, they will be strictly punished according to regulations, in order to maintain the principles throughout the school year.
Discussing the current large-scale inspection and supervision of food safety in the area, the Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Food Safety said that for continuous activities, the unit organizes the subdivision of the area, dividing it into food safety management teams under the Inspection - Legal Department.
Of which, there are 3 teams at 3 unit markets and about the remaining 11 teams are in charge of areas equivalent to 12-15 wards. These teams are the "extended arm" of the Department.
The inspection is carried out in many forms, including periodic, surprise inspections and according to each specific topic in each stage.
Ms. Phong Lan emphasized that the biggest difficulty is still controlling "hiding" facilities in residential areas. Without the cooperation of the people and the press, it would be very difficult to detect violations, because the products when launched on the market are all "beautiful" at the same level. To punish, they must be caught red-handed violating. This is a continuous struggle.
