Increasing numbers of consumers are becoming aware of the unhygienic practices being used to produce white rice noodles.

Dinh Xa Village in the northern province of Ha Nam is well-known as a major rice noodle production area, selling products throughout the country.

A bad odour hangs over noodle producer Do Van D.’s house. Tools used to make the pristine white noodles have turned yellow-brown through old layers of flour. Bags of noodles are piled on the wet floor, with strands of noodles scattered throughout the work area.

Ngo Xuan Truong’s family is the village’s biggest noodle producer, churning out 3-4 tonnes daily. Piles of noodle are put on dirty, wet floors which are then gathered into bundles before being washed in a muddy bucket of water.

Truong often pours bags of flour on the floor and uses his feet to trample the flour as he prepares the next batch of noodles.

Noodles are dried on iron bars over a canal full of rubbish or can be found hanging along paths which become muddy tracks on rainy days, or dusty drive-ways during the dry season.

Trampling the flour

Polluted production area

Dirty water bucket used to clean noodles

Noodles poured on the floor

Noodles being dried over a ditch

...hung along a path...

...beside roadside bushes