Deputy Minister of Health Do Xuan Tuyen said that after more than 15 years of implementation, the Food Safety Law has revealed many inadequacies in the face of the development of e-commerce, supply chains and new types of business. The Ministry of Health proposes to amend the law in the direction of managing the entire food chain, increasing post-inspection and promoting traceability to protect people's health.
The Ministry of Health said that the 2010 Food Safety Law has contributed to forming a legal framework for food safety management. However, practice shows that many regulations no longer keep up with market changes, especially the explosion of e-commerce, online business and increasingly complex supply chains.
In the report on the policy of building the Law on Food Safety (amended), the Ministry of Health emphasized that food safety is not only a matter of personal health but also directly related to the quality of human resources, medical costs and the sustainable development of the country.
One of the biggest changes in the draft law is the shift from managing each stage separately to controlling the entire food supply chain. Supervision will be carried out from the initial production stage, animal husbandry, cultivation, processing, transportation until the product reaches consumers.
Accordingly, food production facilities will gradually have to apply advanced management systems such as Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) or Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point System (HACCP) or ISO 22000 Food Safety Management System and equivalent international standards. This is considered a solution to improve product quality from the root, instead of just focusing on handling violations when incidents have occurred.
The draft also proposes to innovate food management methods according to risk levels. High-risk product groups such as health protection foods, medical nutritional foods, foods for special diets and nutritional products for young children will have to register a notice before circulation.
Meanwhile, most common foods only need to announce applied standards and be supervised through post-inspection activities in the market. The Ministry of Health believes that this approach both ensures food safety and reduces unnecessary administrative procedures for businesses.
Notably, the draft law devotes a lot of content to managing food business activities in the digital environment. E-commerce platforms will have to control product declaration dossiers, advertising information and be jointly responsible if censorship is relaxed leading to food safety violations.
In parallel with that, the drafting agency proposes to build a national food safety data system interconnected from central to local levels. All information about production facilities, products, test results, violation warnings and traceability will be digitized to serve management, inspection and incident handling.
For street food and collective meals - areas with a high risk of food poisoning - the draft law adds many regulations on storing information about the origin of raw materials, the responsibility of businesses and the supervisory role of local authorities.
According to the Ministry of Health, the Law on Food Safety (amended) aims to protect people's health, improve the effectiveness of state management, and create a favorable environment for safe food production and business enterprises to develop.
