The Ministry of Health is soliciting public opinions on the draft Decree amending and supplementing a number of articles of Decree 15/2018/ND-CP of the Government detailing the implementation of a number of Articles of the Law on Food Safety.
The Ministry of Health stated that in the 6 years of implementing Decree No. 15/2018, a number of urgent issues have arisen that need to be considered for amendment and supplementation to suit the reality and requirements of food safety management.
Amending the concept of dietary supplements
In the draft Decree amending and supplementing Decree No. 15/2018, the Ministry of Health proposed to amend and supplement the concept of dietary supplements (regulated in Circular No. 43 2014 of the Ministry of Health) to control the features and uses of this product.
Accordingly, Supplemented Food is a common food supplemented with micronutrients and health-beneficial factors such as vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids, enzymes, probiotics, prebiotics and other bioactive substances, which are added to the daily diet. Supplementary foods are only allowed to announce their supplements; No health or safety recommendations for the use of supplements are recorded or announced.
Currently, Decree No. 15/2018 has not yet regulated and clarified the above concepts, "leading businesses to have difficulty classifying products or classifying products that are not accurate in nature, such as exaggeration of milk for height development, milk for bone and joint treatment, milk for good sleep...", the Ministry of Health stated.
The drafting agency said that the definition of this concept is based on the European Food Safety Authority's definition, the group of dietary supplements has a similar definition to the definition of health protection foods in Vietnam.
Deploying the mechanism of opening up pre-inspections and strengthening post-inspections of food in Decree No. 15/2018, the Ministry of Health stated that the market for functional foods and health protection foods has developed strongly and is very competitive.
Many functional foods are registered, but in reality, there are few businesses
According to statistics from the Ministry of Health from 2021-2024, the food market has more than 84,000 conventional foods; 54,549 functional foods, including 29,779 health protection foods (equivalent to 54.6%), 350 medical nutritional foods (0.6%), 1,287 foods for special diets (2,36%) and 23,133 supplements (42.4%). More than 80% are domestically produced products.
In recent times, food quality management has focused on controlling safety indicators (minrobiological and heavy metal indicators) from pre-inspection to post-inspection and prevention of risks (testing to prevent the act of putting banned substances in food) at the post-inspection stage.
In the context of the food market developing strongly in terms of quantity, types of goods and the emergence of new forms of business on e-commerce applications and commercial platforms, the Ministry of Health believes that it is necessary to strengthen post-inspection and more comprehensive control of food quality.
Accordingly, control organizations and individuals who register for the announcement or self-declaration of products along with control for the functional features.
The draft Decree amending and supplementing Decree 15/2018 proposes to stipulate that only production facilities or product owners are allowed to be named in the disclosure dossier. In case not the two subjects are above, the organization or individual responsible for bringing the product to the market must have a power of at least 2 subjects. This is considered in accordance with the management practice for the field of drug registration and cosmetic product declaration.
In fact, Clause 1, Article 4, Article 6 of Decree No. 15/2018 stipulates the application to all organizations and individuals who make the announcement and are mostly food trading companies, without documents proving their connection with the production facility.
Therefore, the responsibility of the manufacturing facility in the process of preparing the disclosure documents is not clearly stated. "Even in the past, it has been discovered that organizations and individuals have been advertising products with fake records of manufacturing facilities or have not dishonestly advertised food products," the Ministry of Health stated the current situation.
According to statistics from 2021-2024, the dossier for granting the health protection food declaration registration at the Ministry of Health (Department of Food Safety) is 29,779 health protection food products of 25,470 commercial organizations and 201 domestic production facilities.
However, when the post-inspection management agency, the enterprise actually only sold very few products, even these commercial organizations were no longer operating, causing difficulties in management.
