Many goods without Vietnamese sub-labels on Nghe An market

From cosmetics, functional foods, confectionery to fish sauce, children's toys... hundreds of products originating from China, Thailand, Taiwan, Korea, France, America... are being widely sold in the Nghe An market. However, the worrying thing is that most of these products do not have Vietnamese sub-labels, which is a mandatory factor for imported goods according to the law.

According to Clause 3, Article 7, Decree 43/2017/ND-CP on product labels, imported goods into Vietnam whose labels do not show or do not show enough mandatory information in Vietnamese must have a supplementary label clearly stating the product name, ingredients, instructions for use, origin, safety warnings, etc. If there is no supplementary label, consumers cannot know whether the product is suitable for them or not, and cannot control the risks when using it.

In reality, people mostly buy products based on their emotions, based on images, scents or recommendations from sellers. For those who are more cautious, they use language translation applications on their phones to look up product information, but it is still just a “guess” because machine translation is inaccurate and incomplete.

“I once bought a jar of hand-carried melasma cream, all in Chinese characters. The seller said it was very good. After using it for a week, my skin turned red. That’s when I discovered that the cream contained strong bleaching agents. If there had been a Vietnamese label, this wouldn’t have happened,” said Ms. Duong Thuy Tien (Vinh City).

Many products labeled as “domestic Chinese goods”, “hand-carried goods from Thailand”, “cheap Japanese goods”… are advertised massively on e-commerce platforms, live sales, social networks but without any additional labels or quality checks. Buyers only believe in the images and sales advertisements.

Buying and selling goods without additional labels not only violates the law, but also has many potential consequences: incorrect use, ingredient allergies, food safety, and even serious health effects if they are cosmetics, functional foods or medicines.

While consumers are “blind to information”, many businesses take advantage of customers’ preference for foreign goods and cheap goods to import goods of unknown origin, mixing in fake and counterfeit goods. In particular, at large markets, grocery stores or online stores, quality control is almost completely neglected. Labels are only in foreign languages, there are no anti-counterfeit stamps, but customers still buy them because they find them cheaper than genuine goods. Some products are dangerous to use incorrectly, especially functional foods and cosmetics for children.