Vietnamese Food Labelling Requirements

Most labelling pages are about particulars and translation. This one leads with a single rule, because it is the one that sends Canadian product back across the Pacific.

As on the registration page, the sourcing needs stating: Vietnam publishes its own requirements in Vietnamese and its legal repositories are not reachable from here, so what follows is read from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's statement of Vietnam's requirements. CFIA notes that parts of that page come from external sources and that anyone relying on it should confirm with the source.

The expiry date is a condition of entry

It is a requirement that the expiry date appears on the product packaging of every meat shipment exported to Vietnam. The authorities inspect packaging for the presence of production and expiry dates on arrival. CFIA states the consequence plainly: if no expiry date is found on the packaging, the load will not be permitted to enter the country and will be returned to Canada.

Not held, not relabelled at the port, not released against an undertaking. Returned.

This is worth dwelling on because it is so easy to get wrong. Bulk and foodservice packaging is exactly the kind of product where a Canadian plant may not print an expiry date as a matter of course, and where a buyer specifying only the product and the grade would never think to raise it. Nobody discovers the omission until the container is already in Vietnam.

Responsibility sits with you and your importer, jointly

CFIA is explicit that the exporter and importer are responsible for ensuring products are labelled in keeping with Vietnamese requirements. That is not a division of labour, it is a shared exposure, and in practice it means the question has to be settled in writing before the first order, not assumed by both sides.

Pre-packaging is itself a requirement

Food imported into Vietnam is required to be pre-packaged and labelled according to Vietnam's import requirements. That applies whether the product is retail-ready for home consumption, intended for further processing, or destined for food service, so the common assumption that a foodservice or industrial consignment escapes retail labelling rules does not hold here.

That requirement is also what drives one of the establishment carve-outs on the registration page: processed product that is pre-packaged with proper labelling can avoid the approved-list requirement precisely because it already satisfies the labelling condition.

The label is not the only thing inspected

Vietnam applies its own maximum residue limits for chemical residues and its own microbiological requirements, and CFIA warns that these may differ from Canadian requirements. Imported product may be tested on arrival and rejected when found out of compliance.

So a compliant label on a consignment that fails a residue limit is no better protected than an unlabelled one. If your product carries veterinary drug or pesticide residues anywhere near a limit, get the Vietnamese figures rather than assuming Canadian compliance travels.

The order to work in

Confirm that production and expiry dates will print on every pack, including bulk and foodservice formats, and confirm it with the plant, not with the sales office. Put the labelling responsibility in the contract explicitly.

Ask your importer for the current Vietnamese particulars in Vietnamese, since that is the language the label is read in and the requirements are published in. And check your residue position against Vietnam's limits before the first container rather than after the first test.