For the first time, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) conducted a general inspection of Vietnamese pepper export enterprises. This event comes from the incident of a number of pepper shipments of unknown origin causing abdominal pain to US consumers.
According to Mr. Do Ha Nam – Chairman of the Vietnam Pepper Association (VPA), VPA has just received a notice from the Food Hygiene and Safety Department (Ministry of Health) about the FDA’s inspection of Vietnamese pepper enterprises. This general inspection will apply to all domestic and foreign enterprises that produce and process pepper for export operating in Vietnam, scheduled to take place from April to October 2010. Currently, the Department of Food Hygiene and Safety is asking all pepper businesses to gather production records and data for FDA’s work.
In the first quarter of this year, the country’s pepper exports reached 28,000 tons with a turnover of about $85 million. From the beginning of April until now, pepper prices in the Southeast and Central Highlands have increased continuously, reaching 52,000 VND/kg on April 13. Before that, during an investigation into the cause of many people’s pain. stomach in the US because of eating sausages of a company in Rhode Island state, the US side discovered that the pepper mixed as seasoning on that sausage was contaminated with salmonella. Later, two samples of black pepper, collected by FDA inspectors at the company’s headquarters, were found to contain Salmonella Montevideo.
The FDA is verifying additional cases of customers with the possibility of similar symptoms and taking control measures if there are new warnings from the authorities. It is known that monthly this agency publishes a list of imported foods that are refused to be imported or destroyed because they do not meet sanitary standards because of bacterial contamination or toxic chemicals. However, they also only have symbolic, random control, but do not have the ability to control all shipments.
A separate source of the State of Vietnam said that the US side has now asked 5 pepper exporters based in Vietnam (including 2 foreign enterprises) in the “suspect” of suspending exports to this country’s market to wait for the conclusion of the investigation. check. This event is expected to affect Vietnam’s pepper exports in the near future when the US is always one of the leading pepper import markets in the world. From the beginning of the year until now, Vietnam’s pepper exports to the US market increased by 39.8% over the same period in 2009.
According to the Newspapers
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