To:

- Ministry of Information and Communications;
- Ministry of Industry and Trade;
- Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism;
- Ministry of Planning and Investment;
- Ministry of Public Security;
- People’s Committees of provinces/centrally-affiliated cities.

Over recent days, in implementing the Prime Minister’s Directive No. 17/CT-TTg dated May 9, 2017 on promotion of effectiveness and efficiency in state management, and strengthened correction of advertising activities, Ministries, central authorities and People's Committees at all levels of authority have taken their active actions and made their efforts to ensure that advertising activities, including advertisement of health protection foods, conform to law.  

Currently, there is a relatively exhaustive set of regulatory provisions on advertising, including the Law on Advertising, the Law on Food Safety, the Decree providing guidance on implementation of the Law on Advertising, the Decree providing guidance on implementation of the Law on Food Safety, the Decree on Administrative Penalties for Violations in the culture and advertising field.   According to the above-mentioned regulations, in addition to those on prohibited acts, "Entities and persons having advertisements; persons publishing advertisements for health protection foods may advertise after their advertisements are validated, and proceed to display these validated advertisements”.   For the convenience of entities and persons, all of the administrative procedures for registration of advertisements for health protection foods are now made available online (Online public service category-4) by Vietnam Food Administration (Ministry of Health). 

Except entities and persons who strictly comply with regulatory provisions on advertisement of health protection foods, there exist those who commit acts of violation against law on advertising, mainly such acts as advertising the incorrect attributes of the advertised products; displaying advertisements that have not undergone the validation process; advertising by using contents of advertisement other than the validated ones.  

On March 10, 2022, the Ministry of Health acting as the in-charge agency of the Central Interdisciplinary Committee on Food Safety has cooperated with other ministries, central authorities and People’s Committees of provinces or centrally-affiliated cities in holding the online national meeting over “Cooperation in managing advertisement of health protection foods”.  

As the in-charge agency of the Central Interdisciplinary Committee on Food Safety, the Ministry of Health would like Ministries, central authorities, People’s Committees of provinces or cities and relevant units to cooperate on taking the following actions:

1. The Ministry of Information and Communications: Impose strict sanctions on entities or persons advertising untruthfully, advertising without undergoing the validation process conducted by professional bodies or advertising by using the contents other than the validated ones.   Implement severe actions against social networks like facebook, tiktok, twitter, etc., platforms displaying their ads on the google ads platform like youtube, coccoc, chrome, etc., and request them to strictly comply with Vietnam's law on advertising.

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2. The Ministry of Industry and Trade: Strengthen the inspection and examination of advertisements for health protection foods on e-commerce exchanges and multi-level marketing businesses in food protection foods. Adopt measures to supervise multi-level marketing activities, especially the meetings that these businesses hold to recruit new members, in order to avoid any untrue oral advertisement.  Take severe punitive measures and impose strict sanctions against e-commerce exchanges in case of violation.

3. Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism:   Raise public awareness of law on advertising, impose strict penalties against entities and persons, especially famous artists or celebrities involved in any act of misleading advertisement of health protection foods, such as advertising a health protection food as a cure; overstating their efficacy; providing unproven information; using advertising contents that have not been validated by competent authorities, causing harm to consumers' health and financial well-being.     

4. Ministry of Public Security: Direct careful examination to impose strict sanctions against domain name administrators running advertisements in breach of law on advertising on social networking sites to set precedents for future cases of violation.    Lead cooperation with affiliates of the Ministry of Health; the Ministry of Industry and Trade; the Ministry of Information and Communications; the People’s Committees of provinces and centrally-affiliated cities in investigating and sanctioning entities or persons running fraudulent advertisements to deceive consumers.

5. The Ministry of Planning and Investment: Issue stricter regulations on issuance of enterprise registration certificates.

6. People’s Committees of provinces/cities: Command local subordinates (e.g. Departments of Information and Communications; Departments of Health; Departments of Industry and Trade; Departments of Culture, Sports and Tourism; Food Safety Authorities; Inspectorates of provinces/cities) to inspect and take punitive measures against violations arising from advertisement for health protection foods within their remit.   Give local press agencies, radio and television stations, and agencies publishing advertisements, instructions that they are authorized to advertise health protection foods within their remit only when contents of advertisement are validated, and run validated advertisements.    

Raise public awareness so that people do not participate in footages or video clips showing misleading information about effects and efficacy of health protection foods, or advertising health protection foods as a cure.

7. Parent entities of ad publishing businesses: Request their ad publishing units to actively and responsibly check advertisements to determine whether they are the same as those validated by competent authorities, and publish validated advertisements only.    Resolutely resist accepting advertisements without validation stamps of competent authorities in charge of validating advertising contents. Parent entities must carry out regular inspection to detect any acts of violation against law on advertisement for health protection foods that their ad publishing businesses under their management are likely to commit, give warnings about possible actions and take fierce measures against them. 

8. Media agencies: Strengthen communication activities in order to help the public realize that they should buy health protection foods when needed and avoid buying them because of oral advertisements.  When buying health protection foods, consumers should know clear origins, keep invoices or other proofs to be shown to competent authorities in case of legal issues that may arise.

Kind regards,

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PP. MINISTER
DEPUTY MINISTER




Do Xuan Tuyen