The fake milk production ring has just been dismantled by the Ministry of Public Security on a large scale, with a revenue of nearly 500 billion VND, occurring at Rance Pharma International Pharmaceutical Joint Stock Company and Hacofood Group Nutrition Pharmaceutical Joint Stock Company. This ring produces, trades, and consumes fake milk in large quantities in Hanoi and many provinces and cities across the country, raising concerns among people about the choice of food and health protection foods.
According to the Food Safety Department (Ministry of Health), health protection foods are products used to supplement the daily diet to maintain, enhance, and improve the functions of the human body, reducing the risk of disease.
Health protection foods are not drugs, and do not replace medicine. In case of illness, people need to go to medical facilities for timely examination and treatment.
Health protection foods must be granted a Certificate of Receipt by the Food Safety Department to register the product declaration for circulation on the market.
All information about health protection food products that are granted a Certificate of Receipt of Product Declaration and are granted a Certificate of advertising content is made public on the following pages: https://vfa.gov.vn/; https://dichvucong.moh.gov.vn/ and https://congkhaiyte.moh.gov.vn/?
People can look it up before deciding to buy a product.
The Food Safety Department notes that people need to carefully check product information, product labels or secondary labels (for imported products) to ensure full information:
- Product name;
- Production date, expiration date;
- Components, qualitative components;
- Quantization;
- Instructions for use, preservation instructions: Uses, subjects of use, how to use;
- Risk recommendations (if any);
- State the phrase: "Health protection foods";
- Record the phrase: "This food is not a medicine, it does not replace medicine".
- Receipt number for product declaration registration, advertising content confirmation number (if any).
- Name, address of the responsible trader and the product manufacturing facility.
The Food Safety Department also guides consumers: when watching advertisements on social networks, they need to pay attention to distinguishing signs of violations in advertisements.
For example, drinking protective foods will then recover from the disease; or there are images of doctors and medical staff introducing the product, without the words "This food is not a medicine and does not replace medicine" which are advertising contents that violate the law.
According to the regulations of the Ministry of Health, functional foods or health protection foods only have the effect of supporting and supplementing nutrition, not the ability to cure diseases. However, many businesses take advantage of consumers' desire to get better quickly to advertise untruthfully, even using celebrities to increase reliability.
Advertisements such as "completely cure the disease", "quick effects after just a few days", "100% natural family medicine"... are all signs of inflated advertising.
Worryingly, not all of those advertisements are scientifically based or verified by authorities.
In many cases, influential figures on social networks have "inflated" the uses of functional foods, causing consumers to mistakenly believe about the real ability of the product. While in reality, those results are unlikely to be achieved based on just one single product.
The consequences of these inflated advertisements are not only disappointing when the product is not as expected, but also have the potential to harm health.
Not to mention, many of these over advertised products can be fake, counterfeit, or of unknown origin, making users more at risk.
