The proposal was made amid the massive appearance of supplemental food products advertised as helping to enhance child height and treat joint and bone issues.

The ministry is drafting a Decree to amend and supplement several provisions of Decree No 15/2018 of the Government detailing the implementation of several provisions of the Law on Food Safety.

Decree No 5/2018 manages food quality by simplifying paperwork and procedures under pre-inspection (registration of declarations on health foods, medical nutrition food, food for special diets...etc; self-declarations on food supplements and regular food). The legal document also strengthens decentralization, allowing local authorities to receive dossiers of declarations on most food products, and reinforcing post-inspection efforts.

MOH noted that over the last six years of implementing Decree No15/2018, several pressing issues have arisen that require amendments to align with practical conditions and management demands for food safety.

‘Supplemented Food’ concept amended

In the draft decree amending Decree No 15/2018, MOH proposes revisions of the concept of ‘supplemented food’ (as stipulated in MOH’s Circular No 43/2014) to better control the features and functions of these products.

According to the proposal, ‘supplemented food’ refers to regular food enriched with micronutrients and health-beneficial elements such as vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids, enzymes, probiotics, prebiotics, and other bioactive substances added to the  daily diet. 

‘Supplemented food’ should only show its supplement ingredients, and they must not show recommendations and announce the benefits of the supplements.

Currently, Decree No15/2018 does not clearly define these concepts, making it difficult for businesses to categorize products, or improperly categorize products, resulting in exaggerated claims. 

For instance, many milk products are advertised to have the function of enhancing height growth, treating bones and joints problems, or helping sleep.

The decree compilation agency indicated that the definition is set based on references to the European Food Safety Authority. The category of supplemental food has similarities with the definition of health-protective foods in Vietnam.

Implementing a streamlined pre-inspection mechanism and enhancing post-inspection work stipulated in Decree No15/2018, MOH reported that notes that the functional food and health-protective food market has been growing rapidly, with fierce competition.

3 years, 55,000 functional food products

According to MOH, in 2021-2024, there were over 84,000 regular food products in the market, and 54,549 functional food products. Among these, health-protective foods accounted for 54.6 percent (29,779 products), 0.6 percent were medical nutrition foods (350 products), 2.36 percent foods for special dietary uses (1,287) and 42.4 percent supplemented food (23,133). Over 80 percent of them were made domestically.

Recently, food quality management has focused on controlling safety indicators (microbial and heavy metal metrics) from pre-inspection to post-inspection and preventing hazards (testing to prevent prohibited substance usage in food) at the post-inspection stage.

In general, food quality management has focused on controlling safety indicators (microbial and heavy metal metrics) from pre-inspection to post-inspection, and preventing hazards (testing to prevent prohibited substance usage in food) in the post-inspection stage.

Given the strong growth in the food market in terms of quantity and variety, and emerging new business models (on e-commerce apps and platforms), MOH believes there is a need to enhance post-inspection and more comprehensively control food quality.

This includes monitoring organizations and individuals who register for declarations about products and enhancing control over functional claims.

Under the draft decree to replace Decree No  15/2018, only manufacturers or product owners can undersign the declarations. If neither of these two entities is present, the organizations or individuals responsible for bringing the product to market must have authorization from the two entities above. This is seen as consistent with management practices in the field of drug registration and cosmetic product announcement.

Currently, Articles 4 and 6 of Decree No15/2018 apply to all organizations and individuals who come forward and make announcements, and most of them are trading companies which lack documentation to prove connections with manufacturing facilities.

As a result, the responsibility of the manufacturer in preparing the announcement file is not clearly defined. "In some cases, entities or individuals announcing products have been found to falsify manufacturing documentation or provide false records for food product announcements," MOH said.

Statistics show that in 2021-2024, there were 29,779 dossiers to register declarations for food protective products from 25,470 trading organizations and 201 domestic manufacturing facilities.

Vo Thu