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Buying fresh food online gaining popularity among housewives
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VietNamNet Bridge – Like many other housewives in the capital, Hoang My Linh has largely switched to buying vegetables online.

Hundreds of websites and forums selling food have cropped up in recent years. Busy housewives flock to these online markets, including Linh.

You can even find a wide variety of seafood including live goby, climbing perch and pre-cleaned shrimp on websites such as muare.vn, vatgia.com and muachung.com. Other websites offer well-known branded goods such as Tuyen Quang oranges, Bien Hoa dried bamboo, Hoa Loc mangoes and Hoa Binh salt pork.

Since the early days of winter, online shops have promoted their supplies for the Lunar New Year. They put up eye-catching banners advertising "genuine food from the countryside for the New Year," "home-made rice wine," "country chicken" and "clean meats."

Le Lan Chi, a customer who regularly buys meat and vegetables on muare.vn, said that she often orders black pork (heo moi) and vegetables farmed by ethnic people in the mountainous provinces of Ha Giang and Lao Cai. Before ordering the products for the first time, she worried about their cleanliness, even though the website guaranteed the products' safety. However, after eating them, she felt satisfied.

Chi advised that people should seek out reliable sites – and when in doubt, ask where the goods come from and how they are preserved.

"I always buy food for Tet online. I have a lot of experiences buying food online, so I'm not worried about food hygiene and safety," said Nguyen Minh Anh, who lives in Ha Noi's Thanh Nhan District.

Most business owners on the forum confirmed that their food sources are secure because everybody knew each other. If one person complained about a poor-quality food, the information would spread quickly and the shop would quickly be ostracised.

Tran Thi Xuan Thuy, a resident in Lao Cai, sells special food from the northern mountainous region in Ha Noi via online forums. She confirmed that many people in Ha Noi often ordered meat online and called before the meat was shipped to ensure that the food was completely safe.

From 2013, food will be controlled in a strict supply chain, so any hygiene violations can be quickly detected.

With online shopping, the most important thing is to choose sites of reputable companies and buy vegetables with safety certifications.

As online food shopping becomes more popular, it becomes more complicated for officials to monitor the quality and safety of the food offered, so being aware is the best thing consumers can do to protect themselves, said Nguyen Thi Hoa, Head of the Sub-Department of Plant Protection.

She also added that the press should relate any information about food safety problems in the vegetable business to Department inspectors, although the department is not currently responsible for inspecting online food vendors.

Source: VNS