On the morning of May 7, the Ministry of Health held a national online conference on drugs, cosmetics, and fake functional foods with the participation of many ministries, branches, and localities.
Reporting on improving the effectiveness and efficiency of management, promptly detecting, preventing and strictly handling the production and trading of fake milk and fake health protection foods, ensuring safety and rights for people, Mr. Nguyen Hung Long - Deputy Director of the Department of Food Safety (Ministry of Health) said: The situation of fake food is complicated and has tended to increase in Vietnam recently.
The activities of buying, selling, transporting prohibited goods, smuggling, illegally transporting goods, trade fraud and counterfeit goods of food through border lines, land border gates, trails, and border openings are still complicated. Counterfeit products are often sophisticatedly produced, making it difficult to distinguish them from real ones, and are mainly consumed through retail channels, social networks and e-commerce platforms.
Every year, through post-inspection work on food safety, the Food Safety Department has also discovered and handled many cases of food safety violations, including some cases with signs of fake food production and trading, especially health protection foods circulating on the market that have not been announced, counterfeit labels, fake origins, origins, counterfeit quality... The Food Safety Department has transferred them to the police agency for investigation and handling.
In the beginning of 2025 alone, there have been consecutive cases of large-scale and serious production and trading of counterfeit goods discovered and prosecuted by police agencies, typically: cases of production and trading of fake milk, fake medicine, fake health protection foods, noodles, seasonings, fake cooking oil on a large scale, over a long period of time, causing public outrage.
Commenting on the main causes of the production and trading of fake food, a representative of the Department of Food Safety analyzed:
First is high profits: The production and trading of fake food, especially fake health protection food, brings great profits, while the investment cost is low, causing many subjects to defy the law to carry out this behavior.
Second is taking advantage of the current open management mechanism: The legal system and management work, especially in the current period, are creating conditions for businesses in business registration; product declaration registration: most foods are currently self-declared, only 3 product groups must register product declarations with competent State agencies before being put on the market.
Third is the level of sophistication in the production and trading of fake food: Violations of companies use sophisticated tricks to produce and trade fake food, through the face of authorities and deceiving consumers: labeling imported products from the US, Europe but actually from another country or domestically produced with low quality (10-30% announced);
Using labels and packaging counterfeiting famous brands for milk powder, functional foods, cooking oils, spices; establishing many companies to create a wide distribution network; taking advantage of doctors, celebrities, and media to advertise misuse, especially functional foods and powdered milk; using social networks and e-commerce platforms to sell fake goods, making it difficult to control due to anonymousness and large scale.
Fourth is that consumer awareness is still low: Many consumers do not fully recognize and clearly distinguish between food, drugs and health protection foods; easily believe in false advertising, buy goods online without carefully checking the origin and source of the product.
