Two products that have just been discovered to contain banned substances are December 16th, Phuc Linh Gold Spring Shapes and Best Slim Collagen.
These are names that are widely promoted for their "safe and effective" weight loss support, but in fact have the potential to cause damage to the cardiovascular, nerve and even life due to the active ingredient Sibutramine.
It is worth mentioning that Sibutramine has been banned in Vietnam since 2011 and is currently listed as a banned substance in the production and trading of health protection foods according to Circular No. 10/2021/TT-BYT.
However, the two products containing Sibutramine mentioned above are still "smooth" appearing on the market, even being sold publicly on e-commerce platforms and social networks, which is no different from a popular consumer product.
This not only shows the recklessness of business units, but more importantly, exposes the laxity, passiveness and lack of predictability in the control of the authorities.
Meanwhile, an active ingredient with a history of poisoning, has been suspended and recalled nationwide, and should have been closely monitored as a "red warning sign" in the product safety monitoring system.
Another problem is that in the digital business environment, social networks are tending to be turned into a modern "black market". With just a few steps, anyone can sell weight loss products, even banned substances, with beautiful words and eye-catching images.
It is even more dangerous when products containing banned substances are "disguised" under the name of health protection foods, and are also labeled as imported, labeled as "natural extract", "tested" ... making it difficult for ordinary consumers to distinguish between real and fake.
A market where people have to take responsibility for themselves in such a "match of labels" has many potential dangers.
We cannot continue to let the functional food market operate in a "detection - recall - recommendation" style like an helpless loop.
Each product containing banned substances is not only an administrative violation, but a serious health risk, even a hanging murder. Any act of putting banned substances into the consumer chain must be considered a failure in state management.
It is time to tighten the entire control chain: from the stage of announcement, inspection, post-inspection, to the mechanism of coordination with digital platforms to remove, warn and thoroughly handle products with signs of violations.
Management agencies cannot wait for press reports or hospitals to receive new poisoning cases, but need to proactively use big data tools, AI, traceability, early warnings - to extinguish risks from the beginning.
Along with that, it is necessary to establish a joint responsibility mechanism for e-commerce platforms and social networks if products containing banned substances exist on their platforms for a long time without any preventive action.
To protect people's health, in addition to recommending and recovering products, authorities must take strong enough actions to clean up the "cyber market", clean up the food market, and restore minimum safety for consumers.
