The Da Nang departments of Health, and Industry and Trade will soon establish an interdisciplinary team to control the food safety and hygiene of mooncakes during the build up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, which this year falls on 27 September.

The focus will be on increasing checks and tightening the monitoring of food safety and hygiene at 5 local mooncake-making establishments.

In addition, inspection teams for food safety and hygiene in local districts will take responsibility for conducting regular inspections of small-sized mooncake-making establishments and small traders involving in selling this type of cake in their localities.

A mooncake stall

As well as imposing fines on violation cases, inspection teams will also ask local mooncake-making establishments to keep their products out of direct sunlight, and check expiry dates on their products before selling to customers.

According to the city’s Food Safety and Hygiene Department, some local mooncake-making establishments recruit employees without signed labour contracts or health examinations.  In addition, some local makers of these cakes still lack knowledge on food safety and hygiene, and use unknown-origin material for making their products.