Vinastas apologises to consumers for information on fish sauce

The document for apology of Vinatas was published on their offical website.

Vinastas has officially issued a dispatch No. 196/2016 / HTC & BVNTDVN about aplogogizing for provision of the wrong information about the testing results of fish sauce. In this dispatch, Vinastas said, in October 17^th 2016, Vinastas held a conference to announce the testing results of fish sauce nationwide.

However, the program group had informed the careless and indistinct result of testing fish sauce, in that the consistent concept of arsen and arsenic is not right definition according to Vietnam encyclopedia. Hence it caused confusion among consumers and anxiety in fish sauce manufacturers, enterprises and the community when Vinastas published the early information.

"On behalf of the testing team, Vinastas sends an apology to consumers, fish sauce manufacturers and enterprises and management agencies about the incident. We will seriously review responsibilities of the individuals concerned, consolidate organization and working regulations in order to not let the incident happen with the same mistakes, " Vinastas’ dispatch stated.

Earlier, the Ministry of Industry and Trade had an inspection results of Vinastas activities in testing fish sauce. The Ministry of Industry and Trade said that the testing fish sauce of Vinastas did not guarantee independence, credibility and transparency. Although this operation is on behalf of Vinastas, when they implement, they did not plan carefully. The testing was mainly done by the President and individuals, even many stages did not supervise and approve by the competent authorities of Vinastas.

At the same time, the process of taking samples is unreliable. The entire 150 samples were purchased without invoices as prescribed by the Ministry of Finance, it only had the retail invoice, bill of sale, inventory sales (89 samples); 61 forms only had inventory list which was made by staff. Furthermore, there is an inconsistency in the encoding process; some samples did not have an unencrypted form before request for testing.

In particular, according to information provided by Vinastas, the testing activities was conducted under sponsorship from external organizations, therefore, it did not guarantee the independence as specified in Article 28, Law on Protection of human rights consumers.

Moreover, about the information provided by Vinastas in a press release dated October 17^th 2016, Vinastas stated that: "In accordance with Criterion of Vietnam 8-2: 2011 / BYT, the arsenic content allowed in fish sauces is a maximum of 1.0 mg/L. However, the test results showed the arsenic in 101 samples of 150 samples (67.33%) did not satisfy the requirements of Vietnam standards. In that, the total arsenic content of the samples was in the ranged of 1.0 mg/L to 5 mg/L. Notably, the higher – protein in the samples of fish sauce, the rate of samples that have total arsenic content increased. Specifically, 95.65% of the testing samples have protein level of 40 degrees or more were evaluated with arsenic levels exceeding the allowed limit. "

The Ministry of Industry and Trade said that the concept of arsenic was identical by Vinastas which was defined in Criterion of Vietnam QCVN 8-2: 2011 / BYT, "arsenic" is an extremely toxic substance. The Ministry affirmed that "95.65% of the samples have protein levels of 40 degrees or more is considered to have arsenic content exceeding the allowed limit "is not true, it doesn’t have scientific basis and cause confusion for consumers.

Especially, the article "Almost 85% of fish sauce sample of the 88 enterprises did not meet the standard" on Vinastas website dated October18^th 2016 was written that "104 fish sauce samples (69%) did not satisfy the criteria of arsen ( arsenic) - an extremely toxic metalloid "is completely incorrect, unfounded science, causing panic and anger in the society.

Therefore, the publication of incorrect information that related to fish sauce products of Vinastas, has signs of violation the provisions of Clause 12, Article 5 of the Law on Food Safety: "Upload, publish incorrect information about food safety would cause panic in society or damage to production and business. "