Toxic sauce: investigation of information hiding suggested

Toxic sauce: investigation of information hiding suggested
16:57' 08/06/2007 (GMT+7)
VietNamNet Bridge – Deputy Director of the HCM City Health Department Nguyen The Dung on June 6 said that he had asked the HCM City People’s Committee to transfer the matter of the slow promulgation of information about the toxic soya sauce to the local inspection agency for consideration.

“The public even suspects corruption between the (HCM City) Health Department and toxic sauce producers, which harms the prestige of the department, so this case can’t be solved internally,” Mr Dung said.

The official said that the HCM City inspection agency would consider this case objectively and any individuals who were discovered as being involved in corruption would be punished under the law.

“If investigators don’t find corruption the investigation results will help appease the public,” Mr Dung added.

This health official has many times apologised to the public and the press about the lateness in delivering information about toxic sauce. However, HCM City Department of Health’s leaders and Chief Health Inspector Nguyen Duc An said that the tardiness was unintentional.

In related news, the Ministry of Health on June 7 sent a report to the National Assembly’s Scientific-Technology and Environment Committee about the trade and use of toxic soya sauce.

In the report, the Health Ministry says that after having issued the warning of the European Union Food Safety Committee about toxic sauce, the ministry collected information about sauce with high contents of 3-MCPD carcinogen. For Chinsu sauce, tests of 26 samples showed no 3-MCPD. For other kinds of sauce produced by other companies and by Vitecfood, the producer of Chinsu, tests on 221 samples revealed 99 with 3-MCPD (ten samples of Vitecfood) and 82 of them exceeded the standards on 3-MCPD.

The ministry will set up two inter-ministry inspection teams to inspect sauce quality in the two biggest cities of Hanoi and HCM City. The teams will comprise representatives of the Food Hygiene and Safety Agency, the Ministry of Industry, the Market Control Agency, the Goods Quality Control Agency, the General Department of Economic Police, the Public Health Institute and the Institute of Nutrition. The Ministry also proposes that the National Assembly put the Food Law into the law building programme for the 12th National Assembly.

The ministry suggests the government develop a system of food quality and hygiene from the grassroots to the central levels, properly invest in material infrastructure for this task and clearly define the responsibility of related ministries and agencies in controlling food hygiene and safety.

On June 7, HCM City market control forces inspected soya sauce producing establishments and seized nearly 200,000 sauce bottles at Nam Duong enterprises that had quality below the quality standards the producer announced.

(Source: Lao dong, VNE)