People are desperate to find clean vegetables and fruits.

For many consumers today, the only way to recognize and choose clean, safe food is through sight and intuition.

Recently, a series of reports about fruits soaked in chemicals, vegetables abused with fertilizers, pesticides, stimulants, etc. have made consumers worried while the market is still flooded with fruits and vegetables of unknown origin.

Food directly affects the health and even the lives of consumers, so dirty food and food of unknown origin are concerns for every family. Agricultural products are well controlled in quality, but up to now, have not really reached consumers.

Like many housewives, Ms. Nguyen Thi Van Hai, Hong Ha Ward, Ha Long City, does not have much time to shop to prepare meals for her family. In addition to going to the supermarket on weekends, she usually visits street markets to buy vegetables and fruits to eat, although she is not sure about the quality.

Ms. Hai shared: “There are many fake foods sold on the market, foods that do not ensure hygiene and safety. Vegetables sprayed with pesticides are fed to people after 2 or 3 days. Meat is all grown with growth promoters, eating it can easily cause cancer and is not good for people’s health.”

Ms. Hai expressed her wish that all levels and sectors strictly inspect business establishments to ensure food hygiene and safety.

Reality also shows that most people regularly buy foods and vegetables for use but do not clearly understand their origin.

Mr. Pham Manh Dung, Hong Ha ward, Ha Long city confided: "When I watch TV talking a lot about substances in food that cause cancer, I feel scared, but when I buy at the market, I only hear the seller say that the goods are imported from this place or that place, but I don't know the truth."

For many consumers today, the tool to recognize and choose “safe” food is only through sight and feeling. Meanwhile, the actual quality of food is probably only known by the seller and the producer. Based on this reality, in order to ensure food safety and hygiene effectively, ensuring the health of consumers, strengthening management and strict control of food from production to consumption is a very necessary requirement.

Besides, propaganda and dissemination to raise people's awareness in recognizing signs of food safety violations in order to choose safe food is extremely important.

Vegetables sold in the markets are mostly imported from private vegetable areas whose quality has not been checked by any authorities.

Many people, when asked, do not know clearly, or are not sure about the origin and source of the foods they use every day.

Ms. Tran Thi Anh, Yet Kieu Ward, Ha Long City, said that nowadays most of the vegetables and fruits are soaked in chemicals, so after buying them, she has to soak them in salt for a long time to remove the toxic substances. Even the fruits are the same, no matter how many months they are left, they will not rot. Ms. Anh is concerned about how to choose clean vegetables: "Even if you are very careful, you only look to see if the food is still fresh, if it has an expiration date, or simply choose the store you are familiar with, but there is no guarantee..."

According to VOV reporters, most safe vegetables are sold in supermarkets, the rest are sold in safe vegetable stores of enterprises and have not reached the wholesale markets. Consumers often have the habit of going to the nearest market and buying on the way home from work, buying "conveniently" instead of going to the supermarket or to safe vegetable stores to buy vegetables.

Consumers are conflicted between their own words and actions. Consumers trust the advice of acquaintances or familiar vegetable sellers so they only check the appearance of vegetables to see if they are safe.

However, according to food traders at Ha Long market, most of the vegetables imported to the market are sprayed with pesticides and are not inspected, but people still think they are safe to eat.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Hoa, a trader in Ha Long, said she imported vegetables from Bai Muoi - Doan Ket quarter (Ha Lam ward, Ha Long city). "People grow them by spraying pesticides, but they spray for a week so the vegetables are very safe. As for verification, no agency has done it yet," Ms. Hoa said.

Ensuring food safety in the agricultural sector still faces many difficulties, many agricultural products reaching consumers are not yet guaranteed to be safe, because it is difficult to trace the origin of the products. The risk of losing food safety from agricultural products from the initial production is high due to pesticide residues in vegetables and fruits. On the other hand, the awareness of businesses and consumers about their responsibility to public health and their own health is still limited, so unsafe agricultural products still "reach" consumers and have long-term effects on health and life.

Currently, the work of statistics, inspection, assessment, and certification of food safety-qualified agricultural, forestry, and aquatic food production and trading establishments accounts for a low percentage. The handling of violations is still not numerous and not thorough. Therefore, the work of warning, forecasting, and communicating about food safety loss in agriculture has not met the requirements.

More and more households are growing their own vegetables, creating their own vegetable gardens in Styrofoam boxes. In vegetable growing areas, vegetable growers separate vegetables for their family consumption and vegetables for sale. This shows that vegetable growers know the dangers of using pesticides and other chemicals to grow vegetables, but they still do it.

This is just vegetable growing, but meat, fish and other agricultural products are probably in the same situation. This is really a very worrying thing, and who is responsible for this? While people still have to suffer from daily food insecurity./.

According to VOV.VN