Tighten production of functional foods
In the future, the production of functional foods will be tightened. Specifically, more than half of the functional food production facilities may not be qualified to produce after 2017.
GOOD MANUFACTURING PRACTICES FOR HEALTH PROTECTION (GMP)
This is the opinion of Director of the Department of Food Safety (Ministry of Health) Nguyen Thanh Phong at the workshop to collect opinions on building guidelines for good manufacturing practices (GMP) for functional foods, held on March 29 in Hanoi.
According to Mr. Phong, there are currently over 20,000 functional food products that have announced quality standards at the Department of Food Safety, of which 60-65% are products manufactured in Vietnam, 35-40% are imported products, but over a thousand domestic functional food production facilities through inspection discovered that many facilities have sketchy production lines that do not ensure food hygiene and safety standards, produce defective products, and do not meet the active ingredient content.
According to the plan in mid-2017, the Ministry of Health may issue GMP standard – is a good manufacturing practice standard for functional foods. When officially applied, more than half of businesses are not qualified for production. Vietnam has begun to apply GMP to pharmaceutical production and many experts and managers have disagreed with this regulation, saying that Vietnamese businesses do not have the capacity and conditions to produce according to GMP standards. However, up to now, the practical application of GMP in practice is reasonable and aims to ensure product quality.
