Vietnamese shoppers now appear to have a taste for food different from what was traditionally supposed to be appealing in Vietnamese cuisine. Freshness and good appearance, the number-one criteria for choosing food in general and vegetables in particular, are no longer favored by many who now prefer wilted or even wormy greens.
Thirty-year-old Tran Phuong Lan in Hanoi is an example. Lan no longer buys green, good-looking vegetables which, she believes, are too good to be safe. Living in an apartment building south of the capital city, Lan has managed to grow vegetables in trays on her small balcony to feed her ten-month-old girl for fear of food poisoning. Scared by toxic preservatives and pesticides, this young mother even kept her baby away from fruit and gave her vitamins instead.
Excessive use of insecticides and banned chemicals by farmers to boost the growth of fruits and vegetables has increasingly become an obsession for consumers, especially since VTV last month broadcast a shocking report blaming vegetable growers who use banned chemicals smuggled from China and Cambodia to boost growth, allowing them to halve the time to harvesting.
With a small pack of booster pills dissolved in eight liters of water and sprayed on vegetables, a crop might grow in one day what before took 5-7 days. A farmer in the outlying Hanoi district of Long Bien pointed out the advantages of using chemicals for greens: rapid growth, no pests and good appearance, selling better and faster than those grown in the traditional way.
The television report prompted concerned authorities to conduct a test in late January to compare the growth of vegetables with and without chemicals. The test results showed that vegetables sprayed with banned chemicals grew 1.5 times faster than ordinary ones. However, the test revealed that it was not true that those chemicals could boost growth in just a couple of days as rumored.
Chemical contaminants in vegetables were largely attributable to the increased and improper use of pesticides, said Nguyen Quang Minh, Director of the Plant Protection Bureau.
In the past ten years, imports of plant protection chemicals surged by more than 1.5 times with the kinds of agents quadrupling, Mr. Minh said, adding that results of analysis by plant protection inspection centers showed that samples of fruits and vegetables with excessive chemical residues had increased sharply.
According to the latest statistics of the Plant Protection Bureau, nearly 70% of farmers sprayed chemicals 8-12 times on a vegetable crop and 70-80 times on a grape crop.
Investigation into the use of plant protection chemicals in fruits and vegetables by 4,610 farm households found that 25% recorded violations, with 10.6% using banned agents; over 20% failing to meet timing requirements; and nearly 60% using chemicals improperly.
Excessive chemical residues in fruits and vegetables were only one in a series of food scandals that have hit Vietnamese consumers recently, including cancer-causing chemicals in soy sauce, formaldehyde in the national dishpho (noodle soup), borax in gio cha (pork paste), and weight-boosting agents in meat.
A three-year survey by the Ho Chi Minh City Center for Health and Pharmaceutical Products showed that in 2004, some 64% of samples of gio song (raw pork paste), gio cha, banh gio (rice dumpling with pork fillings) and noodle contained borax. The figure was respectively 44% in 2005 and 40% in 2006, with borax contents in banh gio rising from 4% in 2004 to 32% in 2006, and in gio song, from 28% to 52%.
A test by the Ho Chi Minh City Public Health and Hygiene Institute in January also found that 100% of 12 jam and sausage samples contained coloring, of which 33% included banned substances.
Dr. Nguyen Xuan Mai, Deputy Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Public Health and Hygiene Institute, agreed that coloring did no good to human health, stressing that a number of food producers used industrial colorings due to their low costs and long-lasting color, harming people’s health instantly or causing chronic poisoning to the liver, kidney and other organs.
According to Vietnam Food Safety and Hygiene Administration statistics, last year saw 248 food poisoning cases with 7,329 victims, and 55 fatalities, up 2.7% from 2006 in the number of victims, but down 3.5% in the death toll.
Health Ministry statistics also disclosed that Vietnam annually had 200,000 cancer patients, 150,000 of whom died. Around 35% suffered cancer as a result of consuming toxic foods.
The director of the Food Safety and Hygiene Administration, Tran Dang, acknowledged that one of the reasons for food safety problems was a lack of food inspectors both in number and quality as well as a lack of food safety norms.
At present, the administration shared inspection duties with the National Fisheries Quality Assurance and Veterinary Directorate, with some 230 inspectors employed by the two agencies responsible for food safety management.
On average, each province with a population of 1-5 million and 1,000-20,000 food traders had 1-3 health inspectors and 0.5 food safety inspector while, according to the World Health Organization, each province should have 10-15 food safety workers and ensure a ratio of one inspector per 10,000 people.
This modest force of inspectors who were in fact health inspectors rather than professional food inspectors have to deal with 400,000 registered food processors as well as over one million unregistered ones, Mr. Dang said, pointing out that the number of food inspectors was much higher in other countries, with China having some 50,000; Japan, 12,000; and Bangkok alone, 5,000.
This had led to the fact that on average, every year, each commune or ward had its food safety inspected for 0.2 time; each district, 0.4 time; and each province, 1.07 times while high risks for food contamination occurred mostly in localities where 80% of food producers were family businesses with poor facilities and outdated technology.
Worse, food safety testing systems remained limited and failed to meet rising demand. Only 16 out of the country’s 64 provinces and cities have testing equipment.
Yet, the capacity to test chemicals, antibiotics, hormones and toxic agents has remained restricted in localities due to high costs. A test to find industrial dyes, for instance, would cost VND 500,000/time and, for preservatives, VND 300,000-500,000/time.
A lack of food norms was another problem worsening the situation. So far, only 717 norms for food have been issued against thousands of standards required for food safety.
Food Safety and Hygiene Administration Deputy Director Nguyen Thanh Phong pointed to limited investment in food safety management, citing the country’s tiny investment of VND 500 (3 cents) per capita per year compared with the regional rate of USD 1.
According to Food Safety and Hygiene Administration statistics, nearly 90% of food processing households, especially those in craft villages, did not meet food safety and hygiene requirements. Over 67.3% of food processors picked up food with their hands and 46% did not wash their hands. Only half of food processors and traders observed food safety regulations.
A senior health official in Ho Chi Minh City lamented the limited powers of inspectors have largely hindered the handling of violations in food safety. Many violations were neither serious enough for penal liability nor fell under the handling competence of inspectors, leaving violators free from any liability, he said, suggesting that inspectors should be given more power to fine violations.
Under a national program on food safety and hygiene, the Government will annually pour VND 900 billion through 2010 and VND 1.6 trillion by 2015 to raise the rate of food safety inspectors to 1/10,000 people.
In addition, the Government has officially asked the Ministries of Health, Agriculture and Rural Development and Science and Technology to work out a draft law on food safety.
Consumers should protect themselves by being wise consumers as called for by a Health Ministry slogan. Yet, being able to become a wise consumer may not be that simple without drastic measures by concerned authorities, analysts warned. (VLLF).-