Be Very Careful With What You Consume

Every time we put a packaged product in the cart, we trust that someone checked what it contains and how it was made. That trust has a name: sanitary registration. In Colombia, almost every product sold packaged must be registered before INVIMA before it reaches the shelf.

What sanitary registration guarantees

Sanitary registration is the authorization INVIMA grants to sell a regulated product. It is not a decorative seal: it means the product, its manufacture, and its label passed through the health authority. For the buyer, it is the difference between a product with backing and one where you do not know what it contains or who made it.

What you risk with an unregistered product

A product without sanitary registration offers no assurance that its composition, its manufacture, and its label meet the rule. If something goes wrong, tracing the origin is much harder, because the traceability the process provides is missing. That gap is not a technicality: it means less information to decide what you take home. For the seller, the problem is even more concrete: selling a regulated product without authorization is a sanitary violation, with consequences ranging from seizure to closure of the establishment.

When registration is not required

The rule has exceptions. The regulation does not require sanitary registration for some products, among them:

• Natural foods with no processing, such as grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, or honey and other beekeeping products.
• Raw, refrigerated, or frozen foods of animal origin, provided they have not gone through any processing.
• Foods and raw materials, domestic or imported, meant exclusively for industry and the food-service sector to make foods and prepare meals.
• Foods produced in or imported into the Free Port of San Andrés and Providencia, for consumption and sale within that department.

Before you buy, or sell

As a consumer, checking that the sanitary registration number is on the label is a simple gesture that says a lot. As a company, the starting point is to classify the product correctly so you know which authorization it needs, because a mistake in that initial classification is one of the things that most delays a process. You can see how the process works in our guide to the INVIMA sanitary registration and what the agency does in what is INVIMA. In the end, being careful with what you consume starts by looking at the label.