At a meeting on September 25 in Hanoi presided by Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Cao Duc Phat, many representatives of food safety management agencies said that the threats of banned chemicals use in breeding and dangerous pesticide on vegetables are alarming.
Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Phat said that public gets angry over contaminated veggies. Nguyen Xuan Hong, head of the Plant Protection Department, under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, confirmed the situation adding that his department is going to issue a circular to tighten control over pesticide usage.
Moreover, not only normal veggies but imported agricultural produces are soaped with chemicals. Some importer countries have warned over pepper contaminated with pesticide residues.
Following the warning, the Plant Protection Department has taken 30 percent of pepper samples for testing and discovering one sample has higher pesticide content than the allowed rate.
Related agencies also discovered through tests that 13 over 30 samples of pork meat from nearby provinces such as Binh Duong, Ben Tre, Dong Nai and Binh Thuan have excessive content of sulfadimidin.
The Animal Health Department continued testing pork and chicken meat importing into HCMC. Tests result showed that two samples are contaminated with banned chemicals including one chicken meat with chloramphenicol and one pork meat with salbutamol.
