Hanoi (VNA) - The implementation of regulations relatedto food advertisement has improved, but managing advertising on social networkslike Facebook and YouTube has faced a number of difficulties.

Experts spoke at a conference of the national steering committeeon food safety and hygiene held in Hanoi on July 11. The conference aimed tosummarise the work of the first half of this year, and set out the plan for thenext six months.

Representatives at the conference also agreed that the abuse ofbanned substances, chemicals, antibiotics and preservatives in processed foodswere becoming more complex.  

Food poisoning due to poor quality liquor led to a significantnumber of fatalities. Meanwhile, poisoning in industrial and processing zoneshad been reduced, but was still a risk.

During the first six months of the year, the country set up morethan 23,400 delegations of inspectors to check more than 443,100 enterprisesand discovered more than 81,000 violations.

The inspectors handed out administrative fines of more than 38billion VND (1.7 million USD) to more than 12,900 enterprises. As many as 300enterprises were forced to temporarily suspend operations and 300 kinds of foodwere banned from circulation. More than 4,000 kinds of substandard food weredestroyed.

The rate of agricultural, forestry and aquatic product enterprisesmeeting food safety and hygiene standards increased from 91 percent in 2016 to96.7 percent this year.

The rate of agricultural material trading enterprises reachingstandards increased from 89.9 percent last year to 95.6 percent this year.

By the end of June, the country saw 73 cases of food poisoningwith 1,592 victims. As many as 1,483 of them had to be hospitalised and 16died.

Deputy Minister of Health Truong Quoc Cuong said that since thebeginning of this year, the national steering committee on food safety andhygiene issued guidance documents on preventing food poisoning and infectiousdiseases.

Education on food safety on was improved through a range of mediachannels, he said.

Concluding the conference, Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam askedthe Ministry of Health to cooperate with concerned agencies to make adjustmentsto Decree 178/2013/ND-CP, issued in November 14, 2013, regulatingadministrative fines for violations related to food safety and hygiene.

Circulars and national norms on food safety must be promulgatedregularly.

Deputy PM Dam asked the national steering committee on food safetyand hygiene to strengthen its inspections all over the country, with aparticular focus on the use of chemicals and plant protection substances, andensuring safety during the slaughter of livestock and poultry, especially inbig cities.

Ministries and concerned agencies must have specialty inspectorson food safety in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, and consider expanding to severalmain cities and provinces, said the Deputy PM.

Food safety management agencies in different localities should receivemore training, and use the media to increase public knowledge on the issue,said Dam.-VNA