Hanoi (VNA) - Inspections of moon cakes,jams, candies and other foods for the Mid-Autumn Festival will be enhancednationwide at the request of the Ministry of Health’s Food Safety and HygieneDepartment. 

The inspection will be carried out before andafter the major annual festival, which falls on October 4.

Starting on September 5, the capital city’s food safety andhygiene agencies are conducting inspections at wholesale markets, supermarkets,and large food-and-beverage service establishments.

Inspectors will look for fake, out-of-date and substandardproducts, and non-standard food additives and materials at large foodmanufacturing, processing, trading and importing establishments.

The substandard products and those without clear indications oforigins will not be allowed into the market, and food and beverage serviceestablishments found in violation would have their operations suspended.

Moon cake workshops found violating food hygiene standards wouldbe "shamed" in mass media.

Moon cakes are round pastries filled with red bean or lotus seedpaste and may contain yolks from salted duck eggs. Many are made byhigh-end bakeries and packaged in elegant fashion, but othermakers neglect food safety regulations and use cheap and unoriginal rawmaterials to hike profits. The public is therefore being urged to buy mooncakes and other festival food produced by prestige cake makers and in storesmeeting hygiene standards.

Tran Ngoc Tu, Head of Hanoi’s Food Safety and Hygiene Department,says the capital city has hundreds of moon cake workshops, many of which aresmall-scale and unlicensed. Tu warned that it is hard for clients todistinguish which products are hygienic simply by looking at them.

Two years ago, four food poisoning cases caused by moon cakes weredetected in four days, resulting in the death of a mother and child in Ha Tinh province.

In HCM City, the Food Safety Management Board has also beguninspections of moon cakes, jam, candy and other items made for the Mid-AutumnFestival. 

The inspections, ordered by the HCM City Inter-sector SteeringCommittee on Food Safety, will last until September 30. 

Government agencies in the city will check for violations in advertising,product labels, certificates of origin, and processing at small- andmedium-size food establishments, as well as at manufacturers and tradingenterprises. 

Violators will be fined, according to Pham Khanh Phong Lan, head of the city’sFood Safety Management Board. 

Lan said that substandard products and those without clear origin would bebanned for sale, and violators suspended.-VNA