Mr. Le Nhu Tien: The Ministry of Information and Communications has responded quickly to the "arsenic contaminated fish sauce" incident.

Mr. Le Nhu Tien, Former Deputy Chairman of the National Assembly's Committee for Culture, Education, Youth and Children

Talking to reporters about the "arsenic fish sauce" incident, Mr. Le Nhu Tien, former Vice Chairman of the National Assembly's Committee for Culture, Education, Youth, Adolescents and Children, said that experts have clearly analyzed that organic arsenic is not harmful to human health. The Consumer Protection Association hastily organized a press conference and announced this data without thoroughly investigating, which is wrong.

The Consumer Protection Association itself is not a state management agency. The press conference to announce this information must be held by a state management agency. The Association is not a state management agency, so you cannot announce that on behalf of the state management agency. The Association only has the function of consulting and recommending. As for asserting that it is right or wrong, it is not a state management agency or a specialized agency with the level of analysis and evaluation assigned by the State.

After that, the Ministry of Health, after analyzing and evaluating the fish sauce samples, gave the results as safe. Therefore, Mr. Le Nhu Tien said that in a competition in the market, it must be a healthy competition with one's own actual capacity, not using tricks, especially tricks, unhealthy competition to destroy each other.

Regarding the reaction of specialized management ministries on fish sauce quality after this information, Mr. Le Nhu Tien commented that the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development is the State management unit of agricultural and fishery products but did not speak up while the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development should have intervened sooner, and the Ministry of Health should have intervened sooner to confirm the standards and quality so that consumers would not be confused.

“I recommend that there should be strong measures and sanctions against agencies such as the Consumer Protection Association so that in the future, when other associations announce an issue that is harmful to consumers or the people, they must be very careful when announcing or holding press conferences. If you see that, you must coordinate with state management agencies... you should make recommendations to the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Health so that they can get involved, which is better than the association itself holding a press conference to announce it,” said Mr. Le Nhu Tien.

He also affirmed his view that people and producers have the right to sue the Consumer Protection Association for releasing inaccurate information.

Commenting on the press when reporting this information, Mr. Le Nhu Tien said that "the press did not intend to do so but was not alert". When there was such information, the newspapers should have written to specifically ask the state management agency (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development or Ministry of Health) to see how the Association announced it, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Science and Technology would respond. Reporters should have thoroughly researched this issue for the benefit of farmers and fishermen."

Before the press reported on the survey of Vinastas fish sauce, Minister of Information and Communications Truong Minh Tuan immediately spoke up, affirming that this incident "showed signs of dishonest collusion". Mr. Le Nhu Tien said that the Ministry of Information and Communications was quick because the state management agencies in this field (management of standards and quality of fish sauce - PV) were not proactive, so the press was also passive.

The Ministry of Information and Communications can request and suggest the above ministries to give official opinions on this matter to see if the ratio of arsenic in fish sauce is correct. If the other ministries step in to confirm that this arsenic is completely organic and does not affect human health, only inorganic arsenic, it can help to limit some of the damage that Vinastas' fish sauce survey information brings," said Mr. Le Nhu Tien.

According to Infonet