Vietnam faces scrutiny over fake milk and lax food safety rules

The Star

2 days ago

HANOI: Vietnam is grappling with the spread of counterfeit dairy products and self-declared nutritional supplements, many of which have been sold with unverified medical claims and distributed widely through hospitals, pharmacies and rural markets.
Among the most concerning trends is the rise of so-called 'grass milk' (sua co), a marketing term coined by sales teams to promote obscure dairy products lacking recognised branding.
Often imported in bulk and repackaged domestically, these products bypass official testing and are circulated under a loose regulatory framework that allows self-declaration without independent quality verification.
"Allowing low-quality products into hospitals is a serious warning about weaknesses in our control system," said National Assembly Deputy Nguyen Thi Viet Nga. "Hospitals are supposed to be the most strictly regulated environments."
Hospitals and villages targeted
The Ministry of Health has responded by ordering hospitals nationwide to scrutinise their use of nutritional and dairy products. Any items deemed substandard must be removed.
Yet oversight challenges persist across the supply chain, especially with products that have been self-certified and advertised using exaggerated or misleading claims.
In rural areas, sales tactics are aggressive. In Hanoi's Son Tay Town, resident Nguyen Thi Liem described how a sales team brought products directly to her village.
"They let each person drink a free cup, then offered promotions and gifts for those who bought it," she said, showing three tins of 'grass milk' she had purchased.
Other residents shared similar stories of purchasing these products at marketing events or promotional campaigns.
Fake products infiltrate market
Authorities say the problem extends well beyond misleading advertising. In a recent high-profile case, the Ministry of Public Security dismantled a counterfeit milk operation spanning Hanoi and nearby provinces.
The group had manufactured and sold fake powdered milk in vast quantities, falsely advertising it as a high-quality nutritional product for malnourished children and elderly patients.
The products mimicked the branding of well-known companies and claimed to contain premium ingredients, such as colostrum, bird's nest or cordyceps, all of which were later found to be absent or replaced with lower-quality additives.
Nutritional analysis revealed that many items contained less than 70 per cent of the substances claimed on their labels.
One victim, Pham Bang from Hanoi's Hoai Duc District, said she gave her child fake milk for three years without knowing.
"I can't stop thinking about it. I feel so guilty," she said, holding back tears.
The product, marketed under the name Betrice, was produced by two companies now under criminal investigation. Each tin cost VNĐ500,000 (about US$20), and was marketed as a nutritional aid for underweight children.
Regulatory loopholes under fire
These cases have exposed serious weaknesses in Vietnam's food safety regulatory framework. Under Decree 15/2018/NĐ-CP (Decree 15), businesses can self-declare food products after submitting basic safety test results for contaminants like bacteria or heavy metals.
However, the law does not require testing of actual nutritional content, creating what critics describe as a 'loophole for counterfeiters.'
Officials from Hanoi's Food Safety Sub-Department have acknowledged that while companies must submit test results, the current requirements only cover basic safety indicators, not the product's actual composition.
Even more concerning, officials say they rarely conduct post-market sample testing on these products. As a result, once a company's declaration is accepted, products can be legally sold without any further scrutiny, even if the nutritional claims are inaccurate or misleading.
"This is not a regulatory breach," one official noted. "We are following current law."
The consequences are far-reaching. One recently uncovered counterfeit ring was found to have produced nearly 600 fake milk brands. Many were distributed through pharmacies, online platforms and even hospitals.
Another bust in May seized more than 100 tonnes of counterfeit supplements and medical devices from an illicit factory in Hung Yen Province. The products were labelled as imports from France or Spain but had been manufactured with unknown ingredients sourced from local markets.
Authorities said the operation, led by a husband-and-wife team, had been running since 2020 and deliberately targeted infants, pregnant women and the elderly, groups most vulnerable to health misinformation.
Fragmented oversight, diffused responsibility
Critics say Vietnam's food safety oversight is hampered by fragmentation and overlapping mandates.
The Ministry of Health regulates processed foods, supplements and imports. The Ministry of Agriculture oversees production at the farming level, while the Ministry of Industry and Trade monitors distribution and packaging. Local agencies are responsible for licensing, enforcement and inspections.
This multi-agency model has led to a diffusion of responsibility, with no single body held accountable when unsafe products reach consumers. In the recent fake milk case, officials from all involved agencies cited procedural compliance to deflect blame.
Directive 17, issued by the Communist Party Secretariat in October 2022, called for a single national food safety agency. Yet nearly three years later, implementation has stalled due to resource constraints.
"We must urgently revise Decree 15 and implement a unified food safety authority,' said Deputy Health Minister Do Xuan Tuyen. "Oversight must be tightened so that only products meeting quality standards can enter the market."
Calls for reform and ethics education
Lawmakers and experts are proposing sweeping reforms. These include mandatory third-party testing for high-risk products such as infant formula, public disclosure of post-market inspection results, and tighter controls on advertising.
NA Deputy Nguyen Thi Viet Nga called for stricter enforcement and harsher penalties, arguing that the problem extended beyond regulatory loopholes. She pointed to greed and the erosion of business ethics as key factors, noting that some individuals knowingly put public health at risk in pursuit of profit.
She proposed making business ethics a mandatory subject in all economics and business-related university programmes, warning that without early education in integrity, such violations were likely to continue.
Lawyer Hoang Van Ha of ARC Law Firm said the current self-declaration system under Decree 15 was vulnerable to abuse without a robust post-market inspection framework.
He argued that businesses should be required to submit not only safety results, but also the analytical methods used to verify product quality, allowing authorities to detect violations through periodic testing.
Ha added that regulatory agencies should be held accountable for oversight failures, and called for more frequent inspections and stronger inter-agency coordination.
Pharmacist Nguyen Xuan Hoang, Vice President of the Vietnam Association of Functional Foods, suggested that requiring declared testing methods would help distinguish legitimate manufacturers from counterfeiters, as fraudulent producers would be unable to meet methodological standards.
He also proposed that while waiting for formal amendments to Decree 15, technical regulations could be updated to tighten control over testing procedures and prevent low-quality products from entering the market. - Vietnam News/ANN