Ensuring food safety in health-protective food production

Legal Consulting Office of Lao Dong Newspaper answers:

Article 12 of Decree 46/2026/ND-CP detailing the implementation of a number of articles and measures to organize and guide the implementation of the Law on Food Safety (effective from January 26, 2026) stipulates the conditions for ensuring food safety in the production of health-protecting foods as follows:

1. Health protection food production facilities must meet general conditions on food safety assurance specified in Clause 1, Article 19, Clause 1, Article 20 of the Law on Food Safety and the following regulations:

a) It is necessary to establish and maintain a quality management system according to the principles and regulations of Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) for health protection foods to control the production process and circulation and distribution to ensure that all products produced by the production facility meet the quality standards announced and are safe for users until expired;

b) Enough employees with professional qualifications suitable to the assigned job position and trained in basic knowledge of Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP), food safety and related professional knowledge. Heads of production departments and heads of quality control departments must be official personnel, working full-time for the facility and independent of each other. The person in charge of the facility's expertise must have a university degree or higher in one of the majors of medicine, pharmacy, nutrition, food safety, food technology and must have at least 3 years of experience working in the relevant specialized field;

c) The system of factories, equipment and auxiliary utilities is designed, built, and installed in accordance with the purpose of use, according to the principle of one-way, easy to clean, preventing and minimizing the risk of confusion, avoiding accumulation of dirt, pollution and factors adversely affecting the product and maintaining daily hygiene activities;

d) Implement and fully store records and documents on production, quality control, circulation and distribution to trace the history of every batch of products and record all other activities that have been carried out at the facility;

e) All production operations must be carried out according to procedures and instructions. Apply inspection and supervision measures during production to prevent and avoid the risk of confusion, pollution, and cross-contamination. Record the results immediately upon operation or immediately after completing the production stage in the dossier;

e) Having a quality control department to ensure that products are produced according to appropriate conditions and procedures and meet established standards; necessary tests have been performed; raw materials are not approved for export for use, products are not approved for export sales when they have not been assessed as meeting quality requirements; products must be monitored for stability;

g) In case of testing or production under contract, the contract recipient must have enough factories, equipment and personnel to meet the requirements of the contractor and comply with the regulations of the competent management agency on conditions for testing or production of health protection foods;

h) Have procedures regulating complaint resolution, product recall, self-inspection activities; implement according to procedures and record and keep complete records for these activities.

Thus, from January 26, 2026, health protection food production facilities need to meet the above food safety assurance conditions.