Deputy Prime Minister Phạm Thị Thanh Trà speaks during National Assembly Standing Committee's discussion of the draft revised Law on Food Safety in Hà Nội on Thursday. — VNA/VNS Photo Doãn Tấn

HÀ NỘI — President of the Vietnamese National Assembly (NA) Trần Thanh Mẫn has said the draft revised Law on Food Safety should be built on a single guiding principle: one focal point, one data system, one management chain, with accountability enforced to the end.

Addressing the NA Standing Committee's sixth session in Hà Nội on Thursday, NA President Mẫn praised the sweeping overhaul of the Law on Food Safety after more than 15 years in force, noting that the Politburo, the Party Central Committee's Secretariat, and Party General Secretary and President Tô Lâm have closely guided efforts to protect public health and food safety.

He said the draft must reflect three fundamental shifts. The first moves from fragmented oversight to a single body with overall responsibility, with the Ministry of Health as the lead agency, and spells out how ministries and agencies divide responsibilities and coordinate, including who answers for food poisoning incidents or safety violations.

The second moves from procedural checks to risk- and outcome-based management, with risk management as the law's backbone. That will let regulators sort products into three buckets: those needing state pre-market inspection, those businesses self-certify, and those subject to post-market checks.

The top legislator warned that food safety shouldn't be used to bring back a "request-and-grant" mechanism, and administrative reform shouldn't be an excuse to lower safety standards. Any policy that directly affects products or public health must rest on scientific evidence.

The third is a shift from manual inspection to digital, data-driven governance and supply-chain traceability, turning data into core infrastructure under a "declare once, use many times" principle, ensuring transparency while protecting businesses' trade secrets and formulas.

Mẫn also called for controls to start at the source, with tighter limits on chemical residues and better tracing of fresh produce, rather than relying only on inspections after goods reach the market.

"The revised law," he said, "must answer three questions: Is the food reaching consumers safe? Will compliant businesses see lighter administrative burdens? And can incidents be traced to their source, responsibility pinned down, and problems fixed fast enough?"

Presenting the draft, Deputy Minister of Health Đỗ Xuân Tuyên said it narrows the scope of pre-market inspection, speed up decentralisation and delegation of authority, and set up a single State management body, namely the Vietnam Food Administration under the Ministry of Health at the central level, and provincial-level food safety sub-departments locally.

Nguyễn Thanh Hải, who chairs the NA Committee for Science, Technology and Environment, backed the need for the law in the preliminary appraisal report. She called for careful study of mandatory nutritional-fortification rules, higher administrative fines, and possibly stripping professional licenses for intentional violations with serious consequences.

Deputy Prime Minister Phạm Thị Thanh Trà said the Government will take the guidance on board and clearly divide responsibilities between lead and coordinating agencies, stressing that protecting people's health and lives comes first, with risks caught early, from a distance and at the source.

"Risk-based management must be consistent with Vietnamese law and international standards the country has signed onto," she said.

Closing the session, NA Vice President Nguyễn Hồng Diên said the NA Standing Committee backs a full revision of the 2010 Law on Food Safety, urging agencies to quickly finalise a draft that locks in a single-focal-point model with clear accountability while accelerating digital transformation and data-driven management. — VNA/VNS