Need to tighten post- functional food inspection to protect consumers

Patients are lost in the "matrix" of functional foods

Ms. Nguyen Thi Hao in Ho Tung Mau (Cau Giay, Hanoi) has suffered from bone and joint pain and shoulder and collar pain for a while. Seeing her wife sick, Ms. Hao - Mr. Dat listened to an advertisement from a famous person on social networks to buy dietary supplements for bones and joints for his wife to drink. After 3 consecutive days of drinking functional foods bought by her husband, Ms. Hao encountered a series of physical problems such as reflux, even stomach pain for a long time, forcing her to stop using the product.

"My husband knows I have bone and joint pain, so every time I listen to someone say something good, he buys it for me, and sees Ms. H.H advertising healing bone and joint products for many people. He spent 2 - 3 million VND to hide from his wife to buy (TPCN) for his wife to drink, but the bones and joints did not improve, and the stomach pain was even worse.

I felt sorry for the money so I tried to drink it, at first I didn't feel anything, but the more I drank it, the more stomachachach ached it was, I called the seller and they didn't answer the phone anymore, and couldn't pay, so I had to stop taking the medicine. Both upset and regretful about the money but not knowing what to do because I was so happy to buy it," said Ms. Hao.

For inpatient treatment at K Tan Trieu Hospital (Thanh Tri, Hanoi), Ms. Hoang Thi Nga (Rua Son, Thanh Hoa) said that listening to the feedback from many people, during the treatment process, they also bought many types of capsules and water to drink as supplements, however, these products did not bring the expected results.

"When I was sick, I was divided into four parts, I listened to the doctors selling medicine outside the hospital gate and the patients being treated shared many ways to relieve pain and fatigue, and bought all kinds of dietary supplements to drink when using capsules and water pipes, but drinking them did not help, only cost money.

Recently, hearing the newspaper talk about fake dietary supplements sold everywhere is really worrying, patients but we only know about doctors and pharmacies, but now that poor quality dietary supplements have full documents, people do not know how to distinguish them", Ms. Nga worried.

In reality, it is not difficult to produce a type of functional food and then bring it to the market. Introducing himself as a person who needs to produce functional foods to sell in the family's eastend medical clinic, the reporter (PV) contacted a professional address of TPCN processing in Ha Dong, Hanoi.

Receiving PV, an employee of the store named Dang Van said that as long as they make reasonable requests and agree to produce 150,000 TPCN pills at one time, this unit is ready to accept orders to process and produce products for us at the most reasonable price in the market, even accepting product announcement services.

"We have been producing these products for a long time, I just need to ask you to request us, for example, to produce herbal liver-cooled functional foods like dried walnuts or spinach, we will come up with a formula and produce for ourselves. Our requirement is to produce 150,000 capsules/order.

If of goodwill, we will help you make the application to announce it immediately, the price is not more than 15 million VND/set. If you want to support the image of the product production, we can also create conditions for you to film, considering it as your factory, all the raw materials and packaging are from us," said Dang Van, a consultant at TPCN processing company.

Easy announcement, loose post-inspection

In recent years, the functional food market (FFC) in Vietnam has been developing vigorously. According to current regulations, if a business submits a product declaration dossier and some legal documents, it can bring TPCN to the market. The testing of ingredients, effectiveness or safety level is entirely based on the self-declaration of the enterprise, instead of objective scientific assessment.

According to Mr. Vu Vinh Phu - an economic expert, former Deputy Director of the Hanoi Department of Commerce, former Chairman of the Hanoi Supermarket Association, the direct responsibility for controlling the quality of dietary supplements belongs to the competent authority.

"Decree 15/2018/ND-CP has created conditions to support businesses in developing, shortening the time to carry out administrative procedures to register products to bring to the market. However, looking at another aspect, with a large number of products launched on the market each year, when can post-inspections be completed? If post-inspection work is not strictly implemented, it will create opportunities for counterfeit and poor quality goods to spread widely on the market" - Mr. Vu Vinh Phu assessed.