Ministry of Public Security proposes responsibility for verifying food sellers on social networks

The Ministry of Health has summarized the opinions received and explained, contributing opinions from ministries and sectors to the draft Law on Food Safety (amended), including the consulting opinions of the Ministry of Public Security.

Regarding regulations on food safety management in cyberspace, according to the Ministry of Public Security, the draft policy document mentions it, but only focuses on product advertising activities.

Criminals today tend to shift the consumption of counterfeit and poor quality goods through e-commerce products and online sales via Facebook/Tiktok.

Therefore, the Law needs to stipulate the responsibilities of e-commerce platforms and social networks in verifying the identity of food sellers, the responsibility to remove warned products, store and provide transaction data to competent state agencies when requested to perform functions and tasks according to legal regulations.

Regarding this content, the Ministry of Health said that it will include in the draft Law regulations on the responsibilities of e-commerce industry managers, specifically:

First, build a censorship mechanism, requiring sellers to provide and publicize legal documents on products according to regulations.

Second, it is jointly responsible in cases where necessary censorship measures are not implemented, leading to food safety incidents causing damage to consumers.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Environment proposed regulations for food production and business establishments (regardless of scale, type, and product), based on risk assessment (high, medium, low), must be licensed by state management agencies or must be registered and inspected and supervised by state management agencies.

This is to ensure full and strict control of food safety assurance conditions of food production and business establishments.

This Ministry also proposed that the identification of high, medium, and low-risk food products will be regulated by the Government based on food safety risk assessment.

Accepting this issue, the Ministry of Health said that the draft law is being developed in the direction of shifting from the model of "controlling each individual stage" to "managing the entire food value chain". This is to ensure strict management from input factors to production, processing, circulation, and consumption of food.

Accordingly, the Ministry of Health will propose management measures based on controlling food safety risks for each stage in the product supply chain, including measures for some groups of food production and business establishments.

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