Frozen Three Times, Then Rewritten: From 15 November, Food Businesses Under the Trade Ministry Must Produce Traceability Records Within 24 Hours, and the Ministry Drops Its Own Tracing Code

On the afternoon of 24 October 2026, in group discussion of the draft Luật An toàn thực phẩm (sửa đổi), National Assembly Chairman Trần Thanh Mẫn said the Assembly “cannot pass a law whose shell sits in the Law while the substance of the policy waits for decrees and circulars”, and pointed to the lesson of Nghị định 46/2026/NĐ-CP, the food-safety decree the Government had to freeze within days of its taking effect. Eleven days from now, on 15 November 2026, the clearest downstream casualty of that freeze finally gets its replacement. Thông tư 63/2026/TT-BCT of the Ministry of Industry and Trade takes effect and retires Thông tư 11/2026/TT-BCT, a food-traceability circular that was signed in February, suspended in April, suspended again in July, and suspended a third time on the very day its successor was signed. Not one of its provisions ever applied to anyone.

What the document is

Thông tư 63/2026/TT-BCT, Quy định về cơ sở dữ liệu thực phẩm thuộc phạm vi quản lý của Bộ Công Thương, was signed in Hà Nội on 30 September 2026 by Deputy Minister Trương Thanh Hoài on behalf of the Minister of Industry and Trade, on the proposal of the Director of the Cục Công nghiệp (Industry Agency). It has five chapters, 19 articles and one annex, a report form for the results of a traceability exercise. It takes effect on 15 November 2026 and, under Điều 19, replaces Thông tư 11/2026/TT-BCT of 27 February 2026 in full.

The title tells you the shift in object. The February circular regulated truy xuất nguồn gốc thực phẩm, food traceability, and the information system that was to carry it. The new one regulates a cơ sở dữ liệu, a database: how the ministry creates, maintains, connects, shares and uses a food database as one component of the wider Industry and Trade sector database. Traceability survives as Chương III, three articles on what records a business must keep, how long, and what to do when a product turns out to be unsafe.

The legal base has moved too. Thông tư 11 was built on Nghị định 46/2026/NĐ-CP and on Nghị quyết 66.13/2026/NQ-CP, the Government resolution on product declaration and registration. Thông tư 63 cites neither as a basis. It rests on the 2010 Luật An toàn thực phẩm 55/2010/QH12 and its old implementing decree Nghị định 15/2018/NĐ-CP, kept alive by Nghị quyết 15/2026/NQ-CP, and then on the data stack that did not exist when Nghị định 15 was written: Luật Dữ liệu 60/2024/QH15 and Nghị định 165/2025/NĐ-CP, Nghị định 278/2025/NĐ-CP on mandatory data sharing between state bodies, Luật Chuyển đổi số 148/2025/QH15 and Nghị định 224/2026/NĐ-CP, and the 2007 product-quality law as amended by Luật 78/2025/QH15 with Nghị định 37/2026/NĐ-CP. It also cites Nghị định 351/2026/NĐ-CP, the decree that reset the ministry’s own functions.

How the first circular died

The sequence is worth setting out, because it explains why the new text looks the way it does.

26 and 27 January 2026. The Government issues Nghị định 46/2026/NĐ-CP, a new implementing decree for the food-safety law, and Nghị quyết 66.13/2026/NQ-CP on product declaration and registration.
4 February 2026. Nghị quyết 09/2026/NQ-CP suspends both until the end of 15 April 2026, after press reports of food consignments backing up at ports.
27 February 2026. The Ministry of Industry and Trade signs Thông tư 11/2026/TT-BCT, taking effect 16 April 2026, built on the suspended decree.
6 April 2026. Nghị quyết 15/2026/NQ-CP replaces the February resolution and suspends Nghị định 46 and Nghị quyết 66.13 indefinitely, until an amended food-safety law and its implementing decree take effect. Nghị định 15/2018 continues to apply in the meantime.
15 April 2026. One day before Thông tư 11 would have taken effect, Quyết định 906/QĐ-BCT suspends it until 1 July 2026 and tells the Cục Công nghiệp to draft a replacement under the shortened procedure by June.
1 July 2026. Quyết định 1611/QĐ-BCT, signed by Deputy Minister Trương Thanh Hoài, extends the suspension to the end of 30 September 2026 and moves the drafting deadline to the third quarter.
22 August to 21 September 2026. The Cục Công nghiệp posts the draft replacement for public comment, with a comparison table against Thông tư 11.
30 September 2026. Quyết định 2468/QĐ-BCT suspends Thông tư 11 “until the circular replacing it takes effect”, in force from 1 October. The same day, the same Deputy Minister signs Thông tư 63.

The amended food-safety law was presented to the National Assembly on 24 October 2026 by Health Minister Đào Hồng Lan, as a draft of 9 chapters and 74 articles that would replace the 2010 law outright. It is on the list of 39 laws the Assembly expects to pass at its second session, which runs from 17 October to 21 November 2026. So the ministry has written its new circular on the old law, knowing a new one is weeks away, and Điều 19 of Thông tư 63 carries the usual clause that if any instrument it cites is amended or replaced, the newer text applies.

What changes compared with Thông tư 11

The short version: the ministry has dropped the parts of the February circular that required it to build and run things, and kept the parts that require businesses to keep records.

Dropped.

The ministry’s dedicated Hệ thống truy xuất nguồn gốc thực phẩm and its public Cổng thông tin truy xuất, which Thông tư 11 defined as the single access point for food traceability.
The mã truy xuất nguồn gốc thực phẩm, a ministry-issued traceability code, and the rules on vật mang dữ liệu, the QR, barcode, RFID or NFC carriers that were to be printed to a ministry-designed template, activated on the ministry system, and reported on by the companies that manufactured them.
The duty to upload every traceability event to the ministry system within 24 hours of it happening.
The mandatory connection timetable in Điều 15 of Thông tư 11: food producers from 1 December 2026, importers from 1 March 2027, small-scale establishments excepted.
The consumer chapter, under which anyone could look up basic product information free of charge on the portal and report suspect food through it, and the support package of technical help, training and priority in industrial-promotion programmes for early connectors.

Kept, almost word for word.

The một bước trước, một bước sau principle: each establishment must be able to identify the step before and the step after it in the chain.
The list of records a producer must keep, by lot or batch: product name and images, brand and serial numbers, packaging and ingredients, shelf life, the standards applied and the conformity declaration, quantities produced and sold, the location and time of each critical tracking event, the identity and enterprise code of every customer, distributor, carrier, warehouse and raw-material supplier together with the contracts and invoices, raw-material lot details and test results, and finished-lot test results.
Retention of at least 12 months after expiry for products with a shelf life, or 60 months from production for products that do not have to carry one.
The duty to produce those records within 24 hours of a request from a competent authority.
The step-by-step traceability drill when a product is found or suspected unsafe: identify the lot, review production and test files, contact raw-material and packaging suppliers, send emergency notices to distributors asking for sold and unsold quantities, establish the cause, and file the report in the annex. Recalls continue to follow Chương IV of Thông tư 43/2018/TT-BCT.

New.

Critical tracking events and their timing are now anchored to a standard: TCVN 12850:2020 or the GS1 Global Traceability Standard (Điều 4).
The database itself: eight data groups listed in Điều 6, from establishments and products to inspection results, warnings, recalls, standards and traceability data, built to the ministry and national data-architecture frameworks, with the Minister to issue the catalogue and structure of the data separately.
The data comes first from the state’s own files. Điều 5 and Điều 8 say the database is populated from records generated in administrative procedures and reporting, from connections to the national aggregated database and other national and sector databases, and only thirdly from what organisations and individuals supply. Paper files are to be digitised. Điều 13 adds that where the database already holds what an authority needs for a trace, it must use that and not ask the business again, unless verification is required.
Connection by businesses is encouraged, not required. Điều 17 khoản 4 uses khuyến khích. The one hard exception is khoản 5: establishments whose products are on the ministry’s list of high-risk goods must trace them and feed the ministry’s high-risk goods traceability system. That is the VeriGoods regime of Thông tư 31/2026/TT-BCT, in force since 1 July 2026, which had authenticated more than 1 million product codes by the end of May 2026 and requires full traceability before high-risk goods go on sale from 1 January 2027.
The records list gains an entry for GMP, HACCP, ISO 22000, IFS, BRC or FSSC 22000 certificates, for establishments covered by điểm k khoản 1 Điều 12 of Nghị định 15/2018, plus internal control procedures where they exist. For imports, the record must now carry the customs declaration number of each consignment and the importer’s enterprise code; a certificate of origin or origin-country test result is required only where another law demands it, rather than in every case as Thông tư 11 had it.
Provinces, import inspection bodies and designated testing laboratories get explicit digitisation duties, including a priority order for the backlog: valid certificates and designations first, then files on establishments still operating and products still on the market, unfinished sanction cases, and warning, recall and traceability files.

Who it affects

The circular applies to the state bodies, conformity-assessment organisations and import inspection bodies under the ministry, and to every organisation or individual producing or trading food within the ministry’s remit in Việt Nam. Under Nghị định 15/2018 that remit is the familiar list: beer, alcohol and other alcoholic drinks, soft drinks, processed milk, vegetable oil, flour and starch products, confectionery, and the tools and packaging materials for those foods. Household production for own use stays outside it. Exported food follows the importing country’s traceability rules, but anything sold both abroad and at home must comply domestically.

Compared with Thông tư 11, two groups lose something. Consumers lose a circular-level right to a free lookup portal and a complaint channel; Thông tư 63 only says organisations and individuals may use open and published data from the database. Early adopters lose the promised support package. Producers and importers gain time: the 1 December 2026 and 1 March 2027 connection deadlines are gone, and nothing in the new text obliges a business outside the high-risk list to connect to any ministry system at all.

What businesses should do before 15 November

Organise records by lot, not by document type. The 24-hour clock runs from the authority’s request. The practical test is whether a given lot number can be turned into a complete dossier, from raw-material supplier to distributor, in one working day.
Check the retention arithmetic. Twelve months after the expiry date of the last unit in a lot, or five years from production for products without a mandatory expiry date, is longer than most accounting retention cycles for shipping documents.
Importers: capture the customs declaration number per consignment and the enterprise code of the importer, together with producer or exporter contact details, in the same record set.
Check the high-risk list. If a product is on the ministry’s high-risk goods list, the voluntary language of Thông tư 63 does not apply; the VeriGoods obligations of Thông tư 31 do, with the before-sale deadline of 1 January 2027.
Rehearse the drill. The six-step traceability procedure and the annex report form are what an inspector will expect to see once a lot is flagged. Recall mechanics remain those of Thông tư 43/2018.
Name a contact. Điều 17 makes the establishment responsible for the timeliness, legality, honesty and accuracy of the records and for the costs of any traceability or recall ordered.

What the state side must do

The ministry’s Cục Công nghiệp owns the business requirements and must propose the data catalogue; the Cục Khoa học, Công nghệ và Chuyển đổi số owns the architecture, infrastructure and connections. Provinces must digitise what they generate in licensing, inspection, sanctioning and recalls, and start on the backlog in the order above. Import inspection bodies and designated laboratories must feed their results. Funding comes from the state budget lines for science, information technology and digital transformation, plus any lawful outside sources. The database is to connect with the national aggregated database, national and sector databases, and the national product-traceability portal that Nghị định 372/2026/NĐ-CP brings into force from 1 January 2027, covered here earlier.

Open questions

No go-live date. Several duties, including the provinces’ update deadlines and the digitisation of the backlog, run from the day the database “officially operates”. The circular does not say when that is, and the data catalogue that Điều 6 requires has not been issued.
How long this text lasts. The amended food-safety law is expected to pass by 21 November 2026, and Nghị quyết 15/2026/NQ-CP ends the freeze on Nghị định 46 only when the new law and its decree take effect. A circular written on the 2010 law and Nghị định 15/2018 may need a third rewrite within a year.
Three systems for one supply chain. The ministry’s food database, its VeriGoods platform for high-risk goods, and the national platform under Nghị định 372 all touch the same products. Thông tư 63 says the database connects to the national portal, but says nothing about how a company’s VeriGoods declarations and its food-database records relate.
What the public gets. Thông tư 11 promised consumers a free lookup and a reporting channel; Thông tư 63 offers open data in the abstract. Consumer-facing lookups now depend on VeriGoods and on the national platform from 2027.
Penalties. The circular contains no sanction clause. Failure to produce records within 24 hours will be dealt with under the general food-safety and data sanction regimes, which the text does not spell out.

Sources

This post is general information, not legal advice.