On April 25, the Ho Chi Minh City Food Safety Department organized a workshop on “Ensuring Food Safety in the Management of Functional Foods in 2024”.
Ms. Pham Khanh Phong Lan, Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Food Safety Department, said that functional foods – including health food, dietary supplements, medical nutrition – are “exploding” from domestic production to import, distribution, and consumption.
The world has used it before, but Vietnam, although following, has gone too fast, so the import, production, and advertising of functional foods have encountered many problems.
“Many foods are called functional foods, but they mainly use “bucket technology”, simply thinking that it is enough to buy the raw materials and mix and stir them together”, – Ms. Lan frankly stated the reality at the workshop.
Ms. Pham Khanh Phong Lan, Director of Ho Chi Minh City Food Safety Department, speaking at the workshop
According to Ms. Lan, Ho Chi Minh City has 43 factories that meet good manufacturing practices but do not use drug production lines to manufacture functional foods. In order to produce functional foods, it is necessary to build a new production line.
“Who dares to affirm that functional foods sold on the market are all produced in accordance with the process or are there still cases where products that do not meet the standards are still being sold?” – Ms. Lan raised the question.
Besides, according to regulations, in distribution and business, functional foods must be arranged separately in pharmacies and not mixed with drugs, but most of them do not comply.
Currently, there is no provision prohibiting the sale of functional foods in the market, in the supermarket, or on e-commerce platforms. Therefore, there needs to be a law or a chapter specifically for this product. How can people not confuse functional food with medicine?
Many violations in advertising functional foods
The workshop also revealed the reality of indiscriminate advertising of functional foods, such as “my family has been treating all diseases for three generations”, which sounds even better than medicine, curing all diseases, not to mention embedding images on television to create trust with customers.
According to Ms. Tran Thi Thu Lieu – representative of the Food Safety Department, there are many violations in advertising and quality of functional food products. In 2022, the department imposed fines of approximately VND 2.7 billion, and in 2023, fines of nearly VND 1.9 billion for violations in advertising and quality of functional foods.
Ms. Lan said that the Ho Chi Minh City Food Safety Department has been assigned direct responsibility for training, managing advertising, and inspecting functional food products in the area. Therefore, in the coming time, in addition to inspections as planned, the department will also carry out surprise inspections of functional food production and business activities in the area.
