Linh Nguyen Thi Dieu is the founder of Food Safety Ranking project. After YSEALI, she participated in some start-up competitions to sharpen the project design and to raise funds. The project was not successfully implemented in Vietnam, but it brought Linh valuable business experience. Linh is currently a Regional Communications Officer for Alive & Thrive, a global initiative to save lives, prevent illness, and ensure healthy growth and development through optimal maternal nutrition, breastfeeding, and complementary feeding practices.

Organization Information: SafetyRanking.net

Unsafe food is a burning and worsening issue in Vietnam. Between 2000 and 2010, 2000 outbreaks of food poisoning were reported; infecting 60,600 people; and resulting in 583 deaths (Sarteret al., 2012). According to the global food source monitoring company Food Sentry (2013, http://www.foodsentry.org), Vietnam was among the top 10 countries with the most food safety violations in 2013.
Vietnamese people can not well access to safe food because of three main reasons:

1. most people do not know how to define safe food or have no tools to sort out clean food suppliers in the market for their consumption
2. safety criteria are not priority of almost low – income people
3. producers and food suppliers are profit–driven and have a lack of motivation to provide safe food

To address those problems and eventually enhance people’s accessibility to safe food, the project runs a customers’ rating website and mobile application in food safety of different food suppliers in Vietnam (restaurants, vegetable/fruit stores and street food stores). Users of website/mobile application can distinguish safe food suppliers/restaurants for their consumption and access information on dirty food or guidelines on food safety practices.