Ensuring food safety in school cafeterias: Many challenges remain.

Along with a series of food safety and hygiene violations such as bean sprouts soaked in toxic chemicals and fake milk discovered by authorities recently, ensuring food safety and hygiene in educational institutions that provide meals for students is also one of the top concerns.

Thanh Nhat Kindergarten (Buon Ma Thuot City) currently has over 300 children enrolled and provides a half-day meal program. Children are provided with 2-3 meals per day, depending on their age. To ensure food safety for the children, the school has developed specific plans for childcare, nutrition, food safety, and prevention of food poisoning; limiting the use of packaged and pre-processed foods. Every day, under the supervision of the half-day meal monitoring team, kitchen staff receive food according to the menu. The evaluation criteria include food with clear origin and source, and food that is fresh and shows no signs of freezing.

The school's kitchen system is also built on a one-way principle from food preparation to food distribution, with sufficient utensils and equipment for kitchen use, arranged scientifically , and clearly separated for raw and cooked food preparation. The food preparation area is regularly kept clean, adhering to the 10 golden rules of food preparation and the 5 golden keys to safe food; kitchen staff receive training in food hygiene and safety and undergo regular health checkups.

School canteens operate on a one-way flow principle to ensure food hygiene and safety.

At the Center for Supporting Inclusive Education for Children with Disabilities, each meal serves over 180 servings to children with hearing impairments, intellectual disabilities, autism, and those undergoing early intervention. The meals are carefully balanced to suit these needs. The Center strictly adheres to food safety regulations, from personnel involved in food preparation to facilities, food sources, and hygiene. The Center's management regularly inspects raw materials, processing, and food sample retention. To ensure nutritious and hygienic meals, the Center has established a boarding supervision team that daily checks and monitors food origins, hygiene, and meal quality. Furthermore, the Center prioritizes meals for special cases such as sick students, obese students, and students with food allergies.

According to Ms. Krong Ai Huong Lan, Deputy Head of the Department of General Education and Vocational Education - Continuing Education (Department of Education and Training), the province currently has 87 out of 364 primary schools, 325 out of 327 kindergartens, and the Center for Supporting the Development of Inclusive Education for Children with Disabilities that provide lunch services. Most schools have kitchens designed for a one-way flow, ensuring separation between raw and cooked food. The percentage of schools with kitchens meeting hygiene standards according to the Food Safety Law is over 85%, and nearly 95% in urban areas. Schools have also prepared weekly menus in advance and publicly posted them on their websites and parent groups for each class so that parents can monitor and track them.

Inspectors from the Department of Health inspected the food processing and preservation stages at a business selling fresh and processed food.

In recent years, the entire province has not recorded any food poisoning incidents in school cafeterias, but digestive disorders causing many students to be hospitalized for monitoring still occur. For example, there was a suspected food poisoning incident that resulted in 8 students from Victory Primary, Secondary, and High School (Buon Ma Thuot City) being hospitalized; or the case of 11 students from Nguyen Cong Tru Secondary School (Ea Ngai commune, Krong Buk district) being hospitalized suspected of food poisoning after eating a salad they had prepared themselves in the classroom.

The above situation shows that food safety assurance is currently facing major challenges such as: the issue of chemical residues in food; the hygienic conditions of food processing facilities; difficulties in controlling counterfeit, substandard, and smuggled food; and the low level of compliance with food safety laws among some production and business establishments...

On the other hand, some schools in the province do not have their own dining halls, so students still have to eat in the classrooms, and the kitchen space is cramped and unsuitable for the current number of meals served.

For schools equipped with water filtration systems for students to drink, regular maintenance and servicing of the filtration systems have not been carried out; periodic testing of the water source and the water after passing through the filtration system has not been conducted for all required parameters.

Furthermore, some schools lack dedicated medical staff to perform specialized duties, resulting in limitations in advising on and ensuring food safety and hygiene, especially in the three-step food inspection process and food sample retention.

For schools located far from district and commune centers, where it is impossible to transport fresh food daily during the rainy season, the use of refrigerated and packaged food products still persists, affecting the quality of school meals.

Source: https://baodaklak.vn/xa-hoi/202504/bao-dam-an-toan-thuc-pham-bep-an-hoc-duong-van-con-nhieu-thach-thuc-da11b97/