Hanoi: Applying the highest penalty for food safety violations

On April 10, the Hanoi People's Committee held a conference to launch the "Month of Action for Food Safety" in 2025 with the theme "Ensuring food safety, focusing on food safety in collective kitchens, catering services and street food".

According to the report of the Hanoi Department of Health, during the Food Safety Action Month in 2024, the city established many inspection teams, inspected 12,358 establishments, of which 10,469 establishments met the standards (accounting for 84.7%) and fined nearly 2,000 establishments for violations with a total amount of nearly 9 billion VND, while suspending the operation of 7 establishments and forcing the destruction of products of 223 establishments.

Mr. Nguyen Dinh Hung, Deputy Director in charge of the Hanoi Department of Health, said that through the peak inspections, it has been shown that increasing surprise inspections brings better results. Therefore, this inspection method needs to continue to be strengthened during the Food Safety Action Month 2025 (from April 15 to May 15)...

Vice Chairman of Hanoi People's Committee Vu Thu Ha spoke at the conference.

Speaking at the conference, Mr. Nguyen Hung Long, Deputy Director of the Department of Food Safety, Ministry of Health, said that from 2024 to early 2025, food poisoning in collective kitchens, including school kitchens, occurred more frequently and caused unfortunate consequences that outraged public opinion.

Therefore, the theme of this year’s Food Safety Action Month focuses on ensuring food safety in collective kitchens, catering services and street food. Mr. Long suggested that Hanoi authorities continue to focus on strengthening inspections of food safety in and around schools; increasing penalties for food safety violations…

Concluding the conference, Vice Chairman of the Hanoi People's Committee Vu Thu Ha - Deputy Head of the Standing Committee of the City's Food Safety Steering Committee emphasized that doubling the fine for some violations in the field of food safety as stipulated in the Capital Law demonstrated the determination and synchronous participation of the City Party Committee, People's Council, and People's Committee in implementing food safety work.

Ms. Ha added that Chairman of Hanoi People's Committee Tran Sy Thanh - Head of the City's Food Safety Steering Committee requested to deploy the topic of ensuring food safety in schools "without time limit", continuously and regularly...

According to the assessment of the City Steering Committee, in recent times, besides localities that have done a good job of inspection, examination, increased penalties, and publicized units violating food safety, there are also localities that have done it carelessly, "indulgently", and ineffectively...

Ms. Ha suggested that during the Food Safety Action Month in 2025, the city's authorities and districts, towns and cities continue to focus on implementing the topic of ensuring food safety in and around schools; at the same time, focus on monitoring the quality of OCOP products; especially, it will be associated with the highest level of punishment within the authority issued by the city.

During the Food Safety Action Month 2025, Hanoi has established 3 city-level interdisciplinary inspection teams; the inspections will begin from April 15. The teams will inspect the implementation of districts, towns and cities according to thematic areas, combined with surprise inspections of facilities in the area...

Source: https://cand.com.vn/doi-song/ha-noi-ap-dung-muc-xu-phat-cao-nhat-doi-voi-vi-pham-an-toan-thuc-pham-i764689/