HÀ NỘI — The Việt Nam Food Administration (VFA) under the Ministry of Health has fined two dozen companies for violating food safety and hygiene regulations.

During its two-month inspection from September, the VFA fined 24 enterprises for violating regulations on advertising functional foods or supplements a total of more than VNĐ920 million (US$40,000).

Common violations included advertising or announcing the quality and function of supplements and functional foods not suitable with their real quality or advertising products without licenses.

The Sing Health Import and Export Ltd.Co in HCM City was fined VNĐ70 million ($3,000) for violating regulations on advertising its food supplement named Liver Capsule.

The Đông Dương Joint Stock Company in northern Hòa Bình Province was fined VNĐ60 million for advertising a functional food named Gaviteen on its website without getting approval from authorised agencies for the advertisement content.

As well as imposing administrative fines, the VFA also withdrew all products which violated regulations, removed illegal advertisements and revoked food safety and hygiene certificates from firms. The advertisements caused misunderstandings that the supplement was able to treat disease as a medicine.   

According to the VFA, many functional food producers often exaggerate their products’ uses to lure customers and some even announced that their products could help cure hundreds of kinds of diseases. This leads to unexpected impacts on consumer health as functional foods could only help support people’s health and prevent diseases but are not able to treat diseases or replace medicine.  

The VFA fined 99 enterprises for violating food safety and regulations a total of nearly VNĐ5.6 billion ($260,000) since the beginning of the year. — VNS