WINNIPEG – For nearly 20 years, a Winnipeg charity has been selling homemade spring rolls to raise money for poor children in Vietnam.
But the Manitoba Health Department has ordered Tam Nguyen, co-founder of Canadians Helping Kids in Vietnam, to stop, saying he doesn’t have a proper licence to prepare spring rolls for sale.
Peter Parys, director of environmental health with Manitoba Health, says the department wants to minimize the risk of people getting sick.
Nguyen figures someone in the commercial spring-roll market complained about the charity’s low-cost product undercutting them.
Parys says the department wants to make sure the food is prepared at a commercially licensed and inspected facility by a certified food handler.
But Nguyen says tens of thousands of the popular appetizers have been sold through churches, schools and to individual supporters and there has never been a complaint.
Nguyen was one of the so-called “boat people” – refugees who fled by ship after the Vietnam War, especially during 1978 and 1979.
Nguyen swore to help those left behind if he survived the ordeal at sea.
When the tailor settled in Winnipeg, he helped launch the charity in 1995. The spring roll sales started two years later.
Nguyen said he won’t be applying for a permit and has signed a letter given to him by the province promising not to make and sell any more spring rolls for charity.
“We don’t want any trouble with the law,” Nguyen said.
His charity has helped pay for renovations to the Phu Hoa Orphanage in Quang Ngai, which was flooded last year by a tropical storm.
He also organized a field trip for 58 children to visit Ho Chi Minh City.
“This one I do out of my own funds. I feel these kids are missing something.”
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