20 companies violating food safety were fined 500 million VND

According to information from the Food Safety Department, in the first quarter of 2016, the Department issued administrative penalties to 20 companies for violating food safety regulations with a total fine of nearly 500 million VND.

The interdisciplinary inspection team of Nghe An province inspected food hygiene and safety at a store in Vinh city.

Of these, 13 companies violated advertising, 6 companies violated product quality, 1 company violated 2 acts (advertising and labeling); 4 certificates of conformity to food safety regulations were revoked; 6 batches of violating products were temporarily suspended from circulation.

In particular, in this round of penalties, there were 7 companies violating with heavy fines from 20 million to 200 million VND such as: FES Limited Liability Company (Vietnam), Glomed Pharmaceutical Joint Stock Company, all located in Binh Duong; Ngoi Sao Viet Investment and Trade Development Joint Stock Company, Hoang Hai Pharmaceutical Limited Liability Company, Thao Moc Thien Binh Joint Stock Company, and NANO Pharmaceutical Trading Joint Stock Company, all located in Hanoi; TV.PHARM Pharmaceutical Joint Stock Company in Tra Vinh.

Along with the above administrative penalties, the Food Safety Department has forced companies violating advertising regulations to remove violating content; companies violating product quality regulations must recall violating product batches currently circulating on the market, change the purpose of use, recycle or destroy violating product batches according to regulations.

Director of the Department of Food Safety Nguyen Thanh Phong said that during the month of action for food safety in 2016, the Department of Food Safety, the Inspectorate of the Ministry of Health, together with units of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Ministry of Industry and Trade and 63 provinces and centrally-run cities deployed inspection teams to check food safety in accordance with the plan of the Central Inter-sectoral Steering Committee on food hygiene and safety with the theme "Continue to strengthen the production, trading and consumption of safe vegetables and meat," strictly handling establishments that violate regulations.

In addition, in early April, the Department of Food Safety and the Inspectorate of the Ministry of Health will coordinate with units of the Ministry of Information and Communications, the Ministry of Industry and Trade and agencies managing communication and online sales activities to organize a conference on coordination in managing food advertising activities to propose solutions to strengthen coordination between ministries and branches in managing online advertising of functional foods./.

According to Vietnamplus