For the first time, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) conducted an inspection of Vietnamese pepper exporting and exporting enterprises. This event stems from the incident of some unknown shipments of pepper causing abdominal pain for US consumers.
According to Mr. Do Ha Nam – President of Vietnam Pepper Association (VPA), VPA has just received the notice from Food Hygiene and Safety Department (Ministry of Health) about the inspection of FDA for Vietnam pepper enterprises. This general inspection will apply to all domestic and foreign enterprises having production and processing of export pepper currently operating in Vietnam, expected to take place from April to October 2010. Currently, the FHS Department is asking all pepper enterprises to gather records and production data to work by the FDA.
In the first quarter of this year, the country's export volume reached 28,000 tons with a turnover of about US $ 85 million. Since the beginning of April, pepper prices in the Southeast and the Central Highlands have continuously increased, up to April 13, reaching 52,000 VND / kg. In the US because of eating sausage of a company in Rhode Island state, the US has discovered pepper mixed as spices on the sausage contaminated by salmonella. After that, two samples of black pepper were collected by FDA inspectors at the headquarters of this sausage processing company which was verified to have Salmonella Montevideo.
The FDA is verifying cases of customers with similar symptoms and taking control measures if new warnings are issued from authorities. It is known that monthly the agency has published a list of imported foods that are refused to be imported or destroyed because they do not meet hygienic standards due to contamination or toxic chemicals. However, they also control symbolic, random, not capable of controlling all shipments.
Private sources of the State of Vietnam said that the US has asked 5 pepper exporting enterprises located in Vietnam (including 2 foreign enterprises) in the “suspicion” to temporarily stop exporting to this country market to wait for conclusions. Investigate. This event is expected to affect Vietnam's pepper exports in the coming time when the US is always one of the leading pepper import markets in the world. Since the beginning of the year, Vietnam's pepper export to the US market has increased by 39.8% over the same period of 2009.
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