The phrase “one meal, three ministries” has long described food safety management in Vietnam. Meat, fish and vegetables belong to agriculture; beer, alcohol and soft drinks to industry and trade; bottled water, health products and additives to health authorities.
The 2026 draft plan assigns six product groups to Health, 19 to Agriculture and Environment, and eight to Industry and Trade. Each ministry operates its own system from the central to local level.
The division has a rationale, but health risks do not follow administrative categories. A school or industrial kitchen uses products from all three sectors, and an outbreak does not identify its ministry. Risk moves through production, processing, transport, sale and consumption.
The draft amendments to the Food Safety Law propose one management centre led by the Ministry of Health. The ministry says 15 years under the 2010 law exposed fragmented duties, incomplete risk management, disconnected data and inconsistent testing rules.
The centre must be a reform of public responsibility, not only a new organisational chart. One agency has overall responsibility while production facilities, distribution channels, specialists and data remain largely with other ministries.
Officials handling an outbreak must identify those exposed, take samples, trace ingredients, find suppliers, check transport and storage, and stop batches still in circulation. The law must say who decides, who can demand information immediately and who is accountable when a risk persists.
A single centre needs direct access to data, traceability, warnings and emergency measures. If registration, testing, production, circulation and poisoning data remain in separate systems, it will still see only fragments. Risk-based oversight requires shared data and different controls for a repeat offender and a supplier serving dozens of schools.
Accountability is central. People are told who is inspecting after an incident, but less often who was responsible before it, whether warnings existed and why the system failed to detect the risk. Businesses and producers must answer for unsafe food, while state agencies must answer for risks within their control.
Ho Chi Minh City is testing unified management of product groups previously divided among three sectors. The draft proposes similar provincial authorities, while agriculture retains primary production and industry and trade retains anti-smuggling, counterfeit and commercial-fraud duties. The city's results should be assessed publicly first.
A single centre will not solve the problem without staff, testing capacity and data access. Concentration without oversight could slow decisions. Residents do not care which authority lists an egg or a bottle of water; food safety control must act as one system.
The reform will work only if the law answers who can act immediately, who has enough information, and who is responsible when the system fails to stop a risk it should have detected. Renaming an agency will not solve the problem.
Author: Hoang Ha is a lawyer with the Ho Chi Minh City Bar Association and a member of the Vietnam Lawyers Association. He graduated from Hanoi Law University and holds a master's degree in economic law from the University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City.
Sources: Dân Trí
