Images of Quang Linh Vlogs team, Hang Du Muc, Miss Thuy Tien advertising Kera vegetable candy on livestream
According to the Ministry of Health , incidents such as Kera vegetable candy products advertising false uses, or the large-scale production and consumption of fake powdered milk and fake functional foods have caused public outrage.
The amendment to Decree 15 aims to immediately resolve limitations and shortcomings related to self-declaration, registration of product declarations, advertising, and post-inspection in accordance with current practices and management requirements.
Self-declaration records management: From laxity to strict supervision
According to the current regulations in Decree 15, enterprises have the right to self-declare and take full responsibility for their products, and the management agency only conducts very limited post-inspection. This leads to many cases where enterprises arbitrarily classify products, exaggerate their uses, but they are still allowed to circulate.
In the new draft, the Ministry of Health proposes that the agency receiving the self-declared dossier must provide comments, publicly post, develop a post-inspection plan, and conduct monitoring sampling if violations are detected. This regulation is expected to help better control the quality and transparency of the product from the beginning.
In addition, Decree 15 currently classifies dietary supplements as prepackaged processed foods and allows self-declaration, without requiring product registration. This is a loophole that many businesses take advantage of, falsely declaring product groups or turning health protection foods into dietary supplements to avoid advertising inspection.
This revised draft clearly stipulates that food supplements must register a product declaration before being circulated, and must also have their advertising content and uses controlled to prevent misleading information for consumers.
Special food control according to international standards
For health protection foods, medical nutritional foods, and foods for children under 36 months old, previously businesses only needed to commit to complying with food safety and being responsible for the products.
The new draft requires additional control of ingredients, safety indicators, and product uses right from the research and development stage, and requires registration of the declaration before circulation. At the same time, facilities producing this special food group must meet international standards such as HACCP, GMP, ISO 22000 or equivalent, instead of just requiring normal safety conditions as before.
This helps ensure a higher level of quality and safety, similar to developed countries such as the European Union and some other countries.
Quality testing is required
Currently, when registering to declare a product, businesses only need to submit a certificate of safety indicators. Product quality indicators are not mandatory, causing many products on the market to not be as declared.
The Ministry of Health proposed to amend and supplement the requirement to simultaneously test both safety and quality indicators, helping to avoid fraud, increase business responsibility and protect consumer rights.
A very notable new point is that the draft adds the authority of the management agency to revoke food safety certificates, advertising confirmation certificates, product declarations, and remove posted false information.
At the same time, if the violating enterprise has not yet corrected the violation, the competent authority will temporarily stop receiving administrative procedure records until the enterprise has completed the penalty decision. Previously, Decree 15 did not have specific regulations on this matter, so the handling was not thorough.
Strengthen post-control
In addition to tightening self-declaration and product declaration records, the Ministry of Health also proposed regulations to strengthen post-inspection. Accordingly, the current post-inspection work in the old decree does not clearly stipulate the plan, frequency or content of post-inspection.
The new draft has specifically added requirements for planning, periodic post-inspection, and surprise post-inspection; increased authority for testing facilities to proactively collect monitoring samples; and required data connection between the Ministry of Health, other ministries and local authorities via the National Public Service Portal, for consistent management from central to local levels.
Another important new point is the regulation on food products and ingredients that are originally produced for export but then transferred to domestic consumption or have their purpose of use changed.
Decree 15 does not have specific regulations for this case, leading to exported products that do not meet domestic standards but are still sold, causing great safety risks. The draft adds a requirement for tighter control of domestic consumption conditions to avoid "slipping through the net".
Previously, methods of inspecting imported food (such as document inspection, sensory inspection, sampling) were not clearly regulated, leading to uneven implementation.
The Ministry of Health proposes to specify cases that are exempt from inspection, cases that require document inspection, sensory inspection or mandatory sampling, in order to unify management and control of raw materials for production as well as finished products.
In addition, food advertisements on social networks and e-commerce platforms are very difficult to manage. Decree 15 also does not fully anticipate this.
The Ministry of Health proposed to increase inspection and supervision of advertising publishers, advertising carriers, and influencers (KOLs), and to publicize the relationship between advertisers and sponsors.
In addition, a code of conduct in food advertising will be developed to avoid misunderstandings.
According to the Ministry of Health, the draft amendment has changed more than half of the articles of Decree 15/2018/ND-CP. The Ministry of Health is asking the Prime Minister for permission to issue a decree to replace the entire Decree to ensure consistency, transparency, and convenience in application.
WILLOW
Source: https://tuoitre.vn/viet-nam-sap-kiem-soat-thuc-pham-chuc-nang-nhu-chau-au-20250703092619497.htm
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