Nguyen Xuan Hong, head of the Plant Protection Department under the agriculture ministry, brushes aside questions from the media on the toxic chemicals used for treating Chinese-grown pear and apple, as it is reported that such fruits can stay fresh for long periods of between five and nine months. “It’s normal for apples to remain good after nine months,” says Hong.
All begins with news reports that a woman purchased Chinese apples for display on the altar in her house, and after some nine months, the apples still look fresh and beautiful, and of course not rotten. Upon the news reports, the agriculture and healthcare ministries ordered relevant agencies to conduct tests to see whether such fruits were treated with preservatives hazardous to human health. So Hong of the Plant Protection Department took the frontline to answer the media.
However, the reassurance from the veggies safety agency leader fails to restore consumers’ confidence. Rather, it stirs up controversies, as seen in local media these days.
According to him, fruits can be kept fresh for long periods if they are not yet infected by microorganisms, are treated with approved preservatives, and stored in cool places of some five degrees Celsius. Under such conditions, apples can stay fresh for many months.
Tran Thi Mai, who is Lam’s colleague at the same institute, says there are not any materials indicating that apples under normal conditions can still be fresh and not perished after nine months. She raises the possibility of traders using a type of herbicide known as 2,4D, also from China, to treat such fruits, says Vnexpress.
Another scientist, Nguyen Duy Thinh at the Institute for Biotechnology and Food under the HCMC Polytechnic University, bluntly rejects the long life of fruits. “There are not any known (legal) preservation methods that can keep veggies that long,” he asserts in Tien Phong.
Similarly, Chu Van Thien at Vietnam Institute of Agricultural Engineering and Post-Harvest Technology, assumes that “pears and apples from China that can stay fresh for long months must have been treated with certain unknown chemicals.”
Three weeks ago, the Ministry of Health had a working session with the provincial government of Lang Son, a key gateway for Chinese fruits to enter Vietnam. At the meeting, Pham Xuan Da, head of the National Institute for Food Safety and Hygiene Testing, recalled he had purchased a pear, and the fruit after five months under normal weather conditions was still fresh. But Da admitted that it was not easy to find out what chemicals had been used on the fruit, according to Tuoi Tre.
Da explained that as many as 2,000 types of chemicals have been approved for food preservation, while Vietnam has been able to test 600 types only.
Upon the information, Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Kim Tien requested that relevant agencies in Vietnam work with partners in China to find out what chemicals have been used on food exported to Vietnam.
Similarly, Minister of Agriculture Cao Duc Phat, according to Vnexpress, has urged the Plant Protection Department to clarify whether banned chemicals have been used in fruits imported from China. They have to make public this month the findings why pears and apples can be kept fresh for five and nine months.
