The sad state of safe food in Vietnam

Anatta,

When is any food ever safe???  The day that you were born...  Was that the beginning of life, or was it the start of death? 

A some-what-wise one, once said, "Just roll with the punches..."  You forgot about it, huh???

Wild_1 wrote:

"Just roll with the punches..."

while you are beaten by a mob?? No chance in hell!

Shut up, Anatta!  You just want to prolong your own suffering...  Why can't you be like me, and make Budman, Saigonmonkey or Ashard, suffer?

Dude, those guys ate and drank whatever and whenever they wanted...  Such Satans, or Glutons...

Wild_1 wrote:

Shut up, Anatta!  You just want to prolong your own suffering...  Why can't you be like me, and make Budman, Saigonmonkey or Asharf, suffer?

Dude, those guys ate and drank whatever and whenever they wanted...  Such Satans, or Glutons...

Ya right Howie, that's why I spent over a week at the hospital in Can Tho......

Don't be fooled by the beer bottles and beautiful ladies they try to impress you when they have a chance to escape the wives (if ever). Their beer bottles all have holes and the ladies... I think I'd stop here .

One good thing about rising prices in the agricultural business is that they result in reduced use of fertilisers and insecticides.

The article highlights the inability to track sources. Late last year and earlier this year I spent a lot of time hanging around the wholesale food markets Binh Dien, Hoc Mon and Thu Duc here in TP HCM. Two of us, it's not too smart for a Foreigner to go alone to these places, used to turn up at an un-Godly hour in the middle of the night waiting for the buyers to arrive.

Most were Vietnamese although there were a smattering of Foreigners from some up-scale hotels. I noted they made a selection and immediately had the produce moved wither a 'quarantine' area or onto to their trucks.

We identified major players such as from the supermarkets, etc. and particularly the 'organic' stores - as these shouldn't even shop here.

The wholesalers are a very co-operative crowd. When a buyer makes a choice and the wholesaler doesn't have sufficient materials, he radios to his buddy/helper who gets supplies from another vendor then they are wheeled around to the seller so it appears that the goods came from their store room.

I had never seen 'root' plants being grown on rafts floating in rivers before I came to VN. The Dong Nai River has been seriously polluted for years yet for years rafts of vegetables have been growing in mid-stream only to be shipped south to TP HCM. This is how 'heavy metals' enter the food stream.

TP HCM has been aggressively trying to stop bad food from getting to the stores. An article < http://www.saigon-gpdaily.com.vn/Nation … /6/101749/ > describes what they have been doing. Likely we wouldn't want to know what is happening north of Nha Trang including Ha Noi!

Even though there are inspections, both prior to and upon arrival at the wholesale markets, many of the local cho get their supplies direct from farmers avoiding the inspectors. The same happens at certain chain supermarkets.

Even if consumers are prepared to pay over the average for GOOD food, they can never be sure if it is better quality or just a source of extra profit for retailers.

Personally I think the 40,000 cases of food poisoning annually are way under reported in this city of around 10,000,000 people.

The bottom line is you can't trust any claims when it comes to food and where it is grown, in VietNam.

Nope, 40,000 cases are for the entire nation of nearly 90 millions!!!

That says even more about the trustworthiness of the numbers. Even with it, the case is bad enough!!. If "51% of vegetables have excessive chemicals and heavy metals" is under-reporting, one has to wonder what the real number is "100%???!". It makes me laugh whenever I see ridiculous statistics with 2, sometime 3 digits after the comma, like "3.94% of the cases", "improvement of 11.53%", or "won with 96.86% of the votes" in the state newspapers.