97% of functional product businesses violate advertising regulations.

The situation of false advertising of functional foods, exaggeration, and sanctification of the effects of these products has caused consumers to misunderstand and consider functional foods as panaceas.

A batch of smuggled functional food products was seized by Hanoi authorities in early December 2015 (Photo: VNA)

Regarding this issue, Director of the Department of Food Safety (Ministry of Health) Nguyen Thanh Phong warned that recently, authorities have discovered and seized dozens of tons of fake functional foods and functional foods with many ingredients that are not as declared by the enterprise.

3,000 functional food businesses

On December 29, in Hanoi, the Office of the National Steering Committee 389, the Department of Food Safety (Ministry of Health) and Lao Dong newspaper jointly organized a workshop: "Protecting consumers using functional foods."

At the workshop, Mr. Nguyen Thanh Phong said that the functional food market in Vietnam is growing stronger and stronger, from only 13 companies with 63 imported functional food products in 2000, to 2015 there were more than 3,000 establishments producing and trading functional foods. The proportion of domestically produced functional food products accounts for more than 60%.

Besides the rapid increase in quantity, it is worrying that the situation of exaggerated, false advertising and idolization of the effects of this type of product is also becoming more and more common, causing damage to consumers.

Mr. Phong said: “Never before have the authorities discovered and handled as many violations regarding functional foods as in the past. Among the establishments producing and trading functional foods that have been handled, violations regarding advertising account for more than 97% of the establishments that violate.”

In the first 7 months of 2015, up to July 31, the Food Safety Department has inspected, detected and handled 105 establishments producing and trading functional foods in violation with a total fine of nearly 1.9 billion VND. Of which, 102 establishments were handled for violations of advertising (accounting for 97% of the number of establishments violating) with a total fine of over 1.8 billion VND and 3 establishments were handled for violations of other acts such as periodic testing, announcement, and labeling with a total fine of 57 million VND.

Counterfeit goods from China

Mr. Tran Hung - Deputy Chief of Office of Steering Committee 389 said that the situation of functional foods with fake quality, brand name and origin is very worrying.

Typically, within just three months (from July 15, 2015 to October 15, 2015), the authorities inspected, examined, discovered and handled more than 3,800 violations related to functional foods, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. The amount of money collected to the state budget was more than 22 billion VND, and 4 criminal cases were prosecuted with 5 subjects.

According to Mr. Hung, most of the counterfeit and poor quality functional food products are imported from China, through unofficial channels, and when they arrive in Vietnam, the establishments change the packaging, labels, and origin and then sell them. These counterfeit products are sold on the market at higher prices than the real ones.

The Director of the Food Safety Department pointed out that the cause of violations in the field of functional food business is that many subjects take advantage of the huge demand for functional foods to deliberately produce fake functional foods, import functional foods from China and label them with product lines from the US, Canada, Japan, Australia, etc.

In addition, these subjects also take advantage of consumers' lack of understanding, so many organizations and businesses have propagated and distributed many advertising documents for functional foods that do not match the effects of the products, advertising functional foods to cure all kinds of diseases.

Therefore, in the coming time, the Ministry of Health and relevant departments and branches will strengthen management, inspection and examination in the production and trading of functional foods and handle violations./.

According to Vietnam+