Vietnam government responds to VAFIE's food safety decree amendment recommendations

Vietnam Deputy PM Le Thanh Long has tasked the Ministry of Health with reviewing and addressing the recommendations from the Vietnam’s Association of Foreign-Invested Enterprises (VAFIE) regarding amendments to the government’s Decree 15/2018/ND-CP on food safety in accordance with regulations.

Decree 15, issued on February 2, 2018, details the implementation of several provisions of the Food Safety Law. It has been praised by the business community as a significant achievement in reforming administrative procedures, saving millions of workdays and over VND3 trillion ($117.26 million) annually.

After five years of decree implementation, Vietnam’s food sector has seen rapid growth, even during the pandemic, contributing around 15% to GDP, with a 0.38 percentage point contribution to GDP growth in 2021 and 1 percentage point in 2022, according to the Central Institute of Economic Management (CIEM) reports. The decree has also helped ensure food safety as packaged foods is considered the least risky.

However, in its recent letter sent to the Prime Minister, VAFIE - the parent entity of The Investor - pointed out that the draft amendment of Decree 15, released by the Ministry of Health for public feedback on February 19, 2025, includes several provisions conflicting with the policies of the Party and State.

The food business community, both domestic and foreign-invested enterprises, expressed concern as the draft only allowed a short feedback period (10 days from February 19) under an expedited process, while containing many issues that could create new bottlenecks for production and business, complicate administrative procedures, add costs, and waste businesses’ time, it said.

Specifically, VAFIE noted that the draft amendment has increased the number of documents and the processing time for three groups of administrative procedures. For example, regarding product self-declaration, 13 administrative procedures are added and 27 existing procedures are complicated.

The registration and re-registration of product declarations could increase the cost by VND7.23 trillion ($282.75 million) annually for self-declared products and VND1.62 trillion ($63.36 million) annually for registration of declared products.

Moreover, the regulation on restricting the declaration of the benefits of supplement ingredients is not in line with Codex standards, and the definition of "new food" could classify products made from fruits like cherries and kiwis, which cannot be grown in Vietnam, as new food. Transitional regulations that require registered products to resubmit documents would force hundreds of thousands of products to re-declare.

The draft amendment also lacks regulations regarding food safety for street food, fresh food, and collective kitchens - major causes of food poisoning, while increasing administrative procedures for packaged foods which pose minimal risk.

Additionally, the draft proposes a shift from pre-market checks to post-market risk management, with procedures for registering and declaring food products to be processed electronically.

VAFIE proposed the Ministry of Health review the feedback from it and other professional associations to amend the draft decree in a way that does not complicate administrative procedures, causing new bottlenecks for production and business activities.

"Since the government is amending the Food Safety Law, which is expected to be issued in October 2025, to avoid contradictions between legal documents, the Food Safety Law should be amended first, followed by the revision of Decree 15, which guides the implementation of the law," VAFIE recommended.

The association urged the drafting committee of the amended Decree 15 and representatives from associations and food businesses to meet and discuss the amendment in order to improve the decree before it is submitted to the Prime Minister for issuance.