Inspection of Ho Chi Minh City wholesale markets exposes major food-safety gaps

More than 6,000 tons of food move through Ho Chi Minh City’s three wholesale markets every day, yet major gaps remain in controlling products at their source, tracing their origins and dealing with informal trading outside the markets.

The city’s People’s Council monitored the Bình Điền, Hóc Môn and Thủ Đức markets in August 2026. The markets checked documents, collected samples, traced products and handled violations, but those internal controls could not close gaps linked to production sites, infrastructure, staffing and unregulated trading around the markets.

The clearest problem is the mismatch between the speed of trade and the time required for testing. Quantitative tests at state-designated laboratories generally take four to five days. Fresh food often moves out of the market before the results arrive, leaving authorities unable to control shipments while they await confirmation.

At Bình Điền, which covers about 36.3 hectares and has more than 1,400 vendors, average daily arrivals reached 1,775 tons in the first six months of 2026. The market’s daily turnover was about 129 billion dong. It conducted 980 rapid tests and found no hazards through its screening indicators, while authorities worked with the market to penalize nine cases and destroy 770 kilograms of poultry. Rapid screening, however, cannot replace quantitative testing.

The city’s Food Safety Authority found 34 non-compliant samples among 380 agricultural, forestry and seafood samples collected at the three markets for the 2026 Lunar New Year and spring festival season. The samples included one tomato, two mangoes and 31 seafood products. At Thủ Đức, which receives about 2,395 tons of vegetables, fruit and fresh flowers daily, origin records often stop at the province, city or commune level rather than identifying the growing area. Some vendors also fail to keep complete origin logs or undergo regular health checks.