The amendments in the draft decree regarding the Law on Food Safety related to post-inspection will contribute to controlling and further improving food quality and overseeing organisations and individuals registering product declarations or self-declaring products.On March 3, the Vietnam Food Administration under the Ministry of Health asked the Legal Department to conduct a review of the draft decree dossier, which amends several articles of Decree No.15/2018/ ND-CP detailing the Law on Food Safety. Previously, on February 19, the department held a meeting to gather feedback from associations.One of the three groups of amended content focuses on strengthening post-inspection. The goal is to control and further enhance food quality while overseeing organisations and individuals registering declarations or self-declaring products, including their features and functions, and changes to products after declaration.These amendments are proposed in the context of a rapidly growing food market in terms of quantity and variety, along with the emergence of new business models on e-commerce applications and platforms. This necessitates enhanced post-inspection and more comprehensive quality control, with amendments and supplements introduced in Decree 15.Under the new regulations, authorities will oversee organisations and individuals registering or self-declaring products, including their features and functions. Accordingly, only manufacturing facilities or product owners are allowed to be named in the declaration dossier. In cases where neither of these two entities is involved, the organisation or individual responsible for bringing the product to market must have an authorisation letter from the manufacturing facility or product owner.This regulation aligns with global practices for managing goods in general and food in particular. In Vietnam, it has already been applied in management of drug registration and cosmetic product declarations.The reason for this adjustment is that, under Article 4 and Article 6 of Decree 15, the regulations apply to all organisations and individuals making declarations, most of whom are commercial food trading companies without documentation proving their connection to the manufacturing facility.As a result, the responsibility of the manufacturing facility in preparing the declaration dossier is not clearly defined. In recent times, cases have been detected where organisations or individuals falsified manufacturing facility dossiers or submitted dishonest food product declaration dossiers.The new draft has added a section on ingredient explanation for health protection foods, part of the product declaration in annexe I issued with Decree 15. This aims to optimise formulas and control product features and functions: the product formula section includes ingredients and excipients. For food ingredients for health protection, the formula is required to include only ingredients contributing to the product’s function and those stabilising the formula such as antioxidants, preventing interactions or incompatibilities among functional ingredients.This regulation will address the common practice among food manufacturers of producing and mixing numerous substances into a single product. For example, a health protection food product might contain 10 substances or even 15-20 different ones. However, only 3-5 of these contribute to the product’s function, while the remaining substances-often pure chemical compounds, including less stable ones (such as vitamins A, C, E) are added without explanation. (ICE HO CHI MINH CITY)

Fonte notizia: Vietnam Investment Review