Fear of lead-contaminated food 'bombs'

That is the concern of many people when the process of monitoring the recall and destruction of dirty food in general and lead-contaminated soft drinks in particular still has many loopholes.

Information blindness

A basic process in handling food and beverages that are found to violate food safety and hygiene usually goes through the following steps: inspection, detection, sealing, sampling, determining errors, announcing results, recalling, handling...

For example, after announcing the inspection results, on May 31, with the presence of the Ministry of Health Inspectorate and the Department of Environmental Crime Prevention Police (Ministry of Public Security), two batches of C2 and Red Dragon water contaminated with lead with a quantity of over 10 tons were assigned to the waste treatment facility of Vietnam Industrial and Environmental Development Investment Joint Stock Company (Tan Quang Industrial Park, Van Lam, Hung Yen) for destruction.

The information also shows that according to the destruction process, the product is separated into shells and water. After being separated, the bottle shells will be cleaned to meet standards and then recycled. The water is treated at a liquid wastewater treatment plant according to environmental regulations.

Consumers are still concerned about contaminated products returning to the market.

However, food chemist Pham Minh Duy raised the issue: “I do not believe that all shipments found to be in violation are 100% destroyed. As a consumer, I have every right to suspect that it may still exist in some way. Because if it is destroyed, the violating company will certainly make a big deal about this issue, even as a way to promote and regain consumer trust. But here, information about the destruction process is very rare.”

Sharing this view, economist Dr. Ngo Tri Long also admitted that he himself really did not know how to destroy drinking water. For example, for solid foods after being collected, they are usually buried and covered with chemicals to destroy them, or some other products will be burned... As for soft drink bottles contaminated with lead, if the water is not treated properly, it will cause more harm to the environment. In particular, if the bottles are treated and recycled, they need to be closely monitored and inspected because they can still be a source of dangerous contamination for users.

Dr. Ngo Tri Long further analyzed: Normally, after the decision to inspect and detect lead-contaminated food is made, the handling issue including recall and destruction is very important. For each different product, the handling method is also different. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a monitoring council, including who, in which units, and it must be publicly announced. “But it seems that the regulations for monitoring and handling unsafe food are not clearly defined. For example, who will be responsible for the destruction of landfills or the improper treatment of water contaminated with toxic substances, causing environmental pollution? If not done decisively, these products can somehow return to the market without the consumer knowing. Therefore, it is necessary to clearly announce information about each step of implementation so that consumers know and feel secure,” said Dr. Ngo Tri Long.

Process unknown

Explaining the process of monitoring and destroying unsafe food, the leader of the Environmental Crime Prevention Police Department of Ho Chi Minh City Police also said that depending on each violation, the participation of the environmental police may or may not be required. For example, if the case is discovered by the environmental police, this unit will participate in sealing, taking samples for testing, announcing and supervising the destruction. As for cases reported and destroyed by businesses or discovered by other management units, the environmental police will not participate in monitoring. The businesses themselves will destroy and report back to the management units.

According to an expert in the food chemistry industry, the actual destruction process still has too many loopholes. There was a case he witnessed where expired goods should have been 100% destroyed, but the business "colluded" with the destruction unit and instead of destroying all 10 batches, only 1 batch was destroyed. The destruction was also fully recorded on video, but the other 9 batches were brought back to the warehouse, given new expiration dates, and then put on sale.

Dr. Tran Van Ky, Food Safety Science Association, also commented: There is currently no specific guidance document on the process of destroying and monitoring lead-contaminated drinking water. In particular, there are no clear regulations on environmental treatment during destruction, how to monitor, who monitors... and each place does it differently. In fact, consumers do not know how this destruction is carried out. Currently, if non-food products violate the law, the destruction will be supervised by the environmental management agency. Food products are usually mainly supervised by the food safety management and market management units, but there are no regulations requiring anyone to participate in monitoring the destruction process.

Assigning waste treatment services to units is often difficult to control or "head of the elephant, tail of the mouse". Therefore, supervision must be tightened to avoid two cases: The product should be destroyed, but the unit saves costs and just dumps it directly into the environment. The second case with the highest risk is returning the product to consumers after changing the label. Moreover, lead-contaminated soft drinks are often very expensive to treat, more than the cost of buying the product, so the risk of dumping it directly into the environment to reduce costs is very high.

“There needs to be an independent agency to supervise the treatment and destruction, an agency that is not related to the interests of the manufacturer or manager, to ensure that the product does not return to consumers. Second, there must be a unified treatment process between food and environmental management. In particular, it is necessary to clearly state the treatment process in relevant legal documents,” emphasized Dr. Tran Van Ky.

According to TNO