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In order to improve the safety of seafood in the domestic seafood distribution chains (DSDCs) in Vietnam, a better understanding of current hygiene and practices compliance with government regulations is needed. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Infrastructure conditions and documents related to hygiene procedures of 50 trading places were evaluated using checklists. The hygiene handling practices of 135 fish distributors were also observed by using notational analysis methods. This notational analysis method focused on actions related to microbiological contamination in terms of hand washing or glove changing and the cleaning and sanitising of tools and equipment. Additionally, microbiological quality of 135 samples of raw finfish at points along distribution chains was compared with national standards.

The results indicated that all trading places could be classified as non-compliant or seriously non-compliant with the regulations. The practices of fish distributors were also assessed to be at high risk for contamination of raw fish. The findings showed that approximately 42 and 39 per cent of samples from fishing ports and fish markets, respectively were classified as unacceptable according to the microbiological standards of Vietnam.

The present study is limited to research only from fish landing at fishing ports to the distribution to consumers at retail markets.

Recommendations for improving food safety in the DSDCs in Vietnam have been developed from the findings of this study and are provided. However, due to similarities with fish distribution chains in other countries, these recommendations may have broader application.

THE Reference Department of Paisley Central Library today occupies the room which was the original Public Library built in 1870 and opened to the public in April 1871. Since that date two extensions to the building have taken place. The first, in 1882, provided a separate room for both Reference and Lending libraries; the second, opened in 1938, provided a new Children's Department. Together with the original cost of the building, these extensions were entirely financed by Sir Peter Coats, James Coats of Auchendrane and Daniel Coats respectively. The people of Paisley indeed owe much to this one family, whose generosity was great. They not only provided the capital required but continued to donate many useful and often extremely valuable works of reference over the many years that followed. In 1975 Paisley Library was incorporated in the new Renfrew District library service.

It tends to be called the corner shop, mainly because it occupied a corner building for extra window space, but also due to the impetus given to the name by television series seeking to portray life as it used to be. The village grew from the land, a permanent stopping place for the wandering tribes of early Britain, the Saxons, Welsh, Angles; it furnished the needs of those forming it and eventually a village store or shop was one of those needs. Where the needs have remained unchanged, the village is much as it has always been, a historical portrait. The town grew out of the village, sometimes a conglomerate of several adjacent villages. In the days before cheap transport, the corner shop, in euphoric business terms, would be described as “a little gold mine”, able to hold its own against the first introduction of multiple chain stores, but after 1914 everything changed. Edwardian England was blasted out of existence by the holocaust of 1914–18, destroyed beyond all hope of recovery. The patterns of retail trading changed and have been continuously changing ever since. A highly developed system of cheap bus transport took village housewives and also those in the outlying parts of town into busy central shopping streets. The jaunt of the week for the village wife who saw little during the working days; the corner shop remained mainly for things they had “run out of”. Every village had its “uppety” madames however who affected disdain of the corner shop and its proprietors, preferring to swish their skirts in more fashionable emporia, basking in the obsequious reception by the proprietor and his equally servile staff.

According to The Times, prompt action is likely to be taken by the Government to deal with the danger to the public health due to the consumption of contaminated, or essentially impure, milk. At present the authorities are faced with a serious difficulty, owing to the absence on active service of so many officials concerned with the administration of the law relating to these matters the release of whom was strongly urged in The Times recently. It was owing to the inroads made on the staffs of the central authority and the local administrations that the Milk and Dairies (Consolidation) Act of 1915 was not put into force. As soon as a sufficient number of officials are released by demobilization, and special steps are being taken to get this done, the administrative Orders under the Act will be put into force. A similar state of things exists in regard to the Tuberculosis Order of the Board of Agriculture which, among other objects, aims at the elimination of tuberculous cows from dairy herds. With both measures in effective administration very great progress in the removal of a national danger should be almost immediately made.

In the period before Britain entered the European Community and again at the Labour Government's referendum, one factor which caused most concern in both those in favour and those against entry, was the possible loss of sovereignty by the Houses of Parliament to a supra‐national body. That there would be some loss was accepted but fears that it would be anything more than minimal were discounted, and not enough to affect the lives of ordinary people. Far‐reaching changes required by some of the EEC food directives and regulations, which even if held in abeyance for the usual transitional period will have to be implemented eventually, must be causing many to have second thoughts on this. If more were needed, the embarassing situation at the recent energy conference, at which Britain, as a major oil producer, demanded a separate seat, but had to submit to the overall authority of the Community, the other members of which, figuratively, do not produce a gallon of oil between them. A shift of power from Whitehall to Brussels may not be so evident at higher levels of government, however, as in secondary legislation; the language of the departments of government.

The purpose of this paper is to explore storytelling in sustainability reporting. The author posits that large PLCs use their sustainability reports to support the construction of a fairytale of “sustainable business”, and asks if organisations with an alternative purpose (social enterprises, values-based SMEs) and/or ownership structure (co-operatives, partnerships) can offer a counter-narrative of the sustainability–business relationship.

The paper uses the literature on storytelling and organisational mythmaking to gain insight into the construction of narratives and their impact on the reader. A narrative analysis is conducted of the sustainability reports of 40 organisations across a range of entity classes, including large PLCs, values-based SMEs, co-owned businesses and social enterprises.

The analysis indicates that the narratives presented in sustainability reporting are of much the same form across entity classes. The author argues on this basis that sustainability reports represent stories targeted at specific stakeholders rather than accounts of the organisation’s relationship with ecological and societal sustainability, and urges scholars to challenge organisations across entity classes to engage with sustainability at a planetary level.

The paper seeks to contribute to the literature in two ways. First, the author illustrates how the literature on storytelling can be used to analyse organisational narratives of sustainability, and how narrative forms and genres can be mobilised to support potential counter-narratives. Second, the author explores and ultimately challenges the proposition that organisations less often examined in the literature, such as social enterprises and co-operatives, can offer alternative narratives of the sustainability–business relationship.