Where can I find clean vegetables?
(Baonghean) - Safe vegetables, also known as clean vegetables, are fresh vegetable products (including leafy vegetables, stems, roots, and fruits) with levels of harmful chemical, biological, and physical substances below the permitted standards, ensuring safety for consumers and the environment.
The demand for green vegetables in daily meals is very high. This is especially true for people in cities, towns, industrial zones, schools, and hospitals. Because they don't have land to grow their own vegetables, they are very concerned and worried about whether the vegetables they buy at the market are heavily sprayed with pesticides, fertilized with nitrogen and fresh manure, and whether the irrigation water is clean. While buyers worry about their produce, sellers constantly advertise, "Clean vegetables here, buy them!" Buying and selling at the market means the consumer bears the consequences. In rural areas, however, most people have large gardens and families grow their own vegetables, so they don't worry as much as city dwellers.
Only the growers themselves know the difference between safe, clean, and unsafe vegetables on our market today!
Go and see for yourself the vegetable growing areas from Quynh Luong (Quynh Luu) to Thai Hoa town and Vinh City; there are four establishments claiming to grow safe vegetables or clean vegetables. Are they safe and clean? But they are certainly safe for the growers. In reality, in these specialized vegetable growing areas, vegetables for daily family consumption are grown separately from those produced for sale. Just this information alone is enough to understand whether vegetables sold on the market are safe or not! As long as safe vegetable production lacks a specialized organization with trained and guided production techniques following strict procedures, people will continue to consume… contaminated vegetables. The government must have a policy mechanism to encourage safe vegetable growers through measures such as: subsidizing vegetable seeds, supporting the construction of basic infrastructure in safe vegetable production areas (irrigations, greenhouses, sprinkler systems, or drilled wells…).
Assign tasks to specialized agencies such as agricultural extension, plant protection, quality measurement, and food safety and hygiene to directly supervise the construction of models for producing safe and clean vegetables according to proper procedures. The People's Committees of districts, cities, and towns need to allocate a certain area for building stores to advertise, introduce, and sell competitive products. Safe and clean vegetables must be supervised, monitored, and quality-tested by specialized agencies such as the Plant Protection Sub-Department, the Quality Measurement Sub-Department, and the Food Safety and Hygiene Sub-Department, and only then will they be allowed to circulate in stores advertising, introducing, and selling safe and clean vegetables. Certified safe and clean vegetables must be packaged or placed in small bags with clear labels on the outside, indicating the type of vegetable, the production address, and the quality assurance to reassure consumers. Consumers, for their part, must also intelligently choose vegetables from reputable sources with proper labels to boycott unregulated vegetables and support safe vegetables.
In reality, safe vegetables are no better than unsafe or unclean vegetables, and ultimately, consumers bear the consequences. This inadequacy has reached an urgent level of alarm. We urge provincial leaders and relevant agencies to implement the safe vegetable production program effectively, as some provinces and cities nationwide are currently doing. The production of safe vegetables cannot survive without a synchronized production and consumption system.
Doan Tri Tue
