Name of recommendations: Recommendations on abolishing the regulation of iodine supplementfor salt used in food processing and eliminating iron and zinc enhancement into wheat flour for food processing

Status: Responded

Recommended by units: The Business Community in Food Processing Industry (the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers, the American Trade Association in Vietnam. The Transparent Food Association, the Ho Chi Minh City Food Association, the Phu Quoc Fish Sauce Association)

Official letter: No 2992/ PTM - VP, dated: 2018-12-27

Recommended contents:

The Resolution No 19-2018 / NQ-CP signed by The Government’s Prime Minister on behalf of the Governmenton May 15, 2018. It directed: "The Ministry of Healthstudies, amends and supplement the Decree No. 09/2016 ND- CP dated January 28, 2016 of the Government on strengthening micronutrients in food in the direction of: (1) deregulation of "salt used in food processing must be enhanced with iodine" at point a, Clause 1 Article 6; (2) abolishing the regulation "Wheat flour used in food processing must be strengthened with iron and zinc" at Point b, Clause 1, Article 6. Instead of that, only food processing enterprises should be encouraged to use it.

The community of food enterprises was informed that the Ministry of Health has also issued a Plan No. 618 / KH-BYT dated June 26, 2018 on the formulation and submission of the draft Decree amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Decree. No. 09/2016 / ND-CP, which was expected in July 2018, the Ministry of Health wwould post the draft on the website for comments, and would submit to the Government for promulgation in September 2018.

However, until the end of October 2018, there was not any information about the new Decree, and that was causing great concerns that the correct decision of the Government was being delayed to implement, led to adverse impacts on production and business, as well as adversely affecting the goal of improving the business environment of the Government, and delaying the Ministry of Health's own plan.

During the meeting on October 17, 2018 between the working group of the Government’s Prime Minister and 05 ministries and a number of associations, chaired by the Chairman of the Government’s Office Mai Tien Dung, the issue of fixing the Decree 09 / 2016 continued to be raised with many reports and presentations, expressing the first concern of the business community during the past 2 years with regard to inadequate regulations "salt used in food processing must be risen. iodine intensity. It can be clearly seen that the Resolution 19/2018 absolutely did not require to remove this regulation to the salt for direct eating, but it only required the removal of this provision for salt used in food processing, switching to the encourage form.

The food business community continuedto recommend removing the regulation of salt iodine used infood processing and removing fortified iron and zinc into flour used in food processing because they were not effective for public health, on the contrary, caused costly to society, not in line with international practices, caused difficulties for businesses and reduced the competitiveness of Vietnamese goods on the market of many countries including Japan, China, Korea, Taiwan ...Which not allowed to import products with added micronutrients.