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CitizenScience and Technology

Food safety and food processing knowledge enhanced to effectively protect consumers’ health

Posted Date: 30/11/2009
In the past time, the number of food poisoning cases has tolled the warning bell for the lack of food sanitary and safety, threatening human health and living environment. Particularly in the months near Tet holiday, ensuring food safety for each resident has become more important than ever. Dong Nai Chemical Association had recently held a seminar on enhancing knowledge about food safety processing. The seminar attracted the participation of scientist and researchers in the province.
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Popular way of displaying food in markets

 

   Dr. Nguyen Duc Thach, Vice Chairman of Dong Nai Chemical Association, said “scientists and researchers need to find out the nature and harmful levels of popular chemicals used in food production in order to provide useful information for consumers so that they can choose foods more wisely”. He said that popular chemicals used in food production are NaNO2, borax and formalin. These chemical food additives are important for food preservation, keeping the food fresh and green longer. However, overusing chemicals in production process has seriously influenced consumers’ health. The most important thing here is that each region has its own climate and geographical conditions, so the information of food safety needs to be logically and suitably provided to specific residents.

 Associate Prof Dr Dong Thi Anh Dao from HCMC University of Technology stated that “ensuring food safety not only requires the attention from food production or from consumers but also from package production”. The use of nylon or plastic bags to store foods has become more popular and familiar but the harm of these bags has not been known much. These kind of bags takes many years to disintegrate; therefore, very harmful to the environment in the long term. She concluded that we still ignore this fact in food processing and preservation.

 

The use of nylon or plastic bags due to their convenience has become a habit of both sellers and buyers

 

   With the mass of unsafe and unknown-origin foods publically displayed in markets and on the roadsides and have not yet been controlled by the government, we could not expect the awareness and conscience from producers as well as the sanctions from food controllers, Huynh Minh Duc from Dong Nai Standby Medical Centre said. In fact, many regulations on food safety have been issued in the past time and many food processing and production establishments have also been checked, but these could not prevent the widespread circulation of unsafe foods on the market. And the consumers have to suffer the greatest disadvantage from that problem. Therefore, Mr Huynh Minh Duc stated that customers should protect themselves and their relatives from the harm of unsafe foods.

 

Becoming a wise consumer by using food with clear origin. Chicken produced by D&F Company

 

   He suggested that consumers, especially housewives, have to equip themselves with such basic knowledge as choosing food of clear origin; buying fresh and green foods, and cleaning food before use; regularly keeping eyes on information about unsafe food; and carefully considering the habit of using roadside food, etc. This will contribute to enhance the awareness on using clean and uncontaminated food. Also, it will demonstrate that the quality of products will be decided by the buyers who do not choose certain products if the quality of those products is not ensured. Thus it will require producers to pay much attention to the quality of products they manufactured.

       At the seminar, many researches made by Lac Hong University and HCMC University of Technology were introduced with new products originated from the nature.

 Reported by Do Quyen, Translated by Minh Minh