“I wrote to the ministry because the Thit Htoo Lwin blog said the Consumer Protection Association was going to inspect food vendors in accordance with the ministry’s request,” FDA director Dr Tun Zaw told The Myanmar Times last week.
Dr Tun Zaw said the ministry had made no such request. He said he has not yet received a reply from the ministry to his request for legal action.
On December 1, the Ministry of Information also submitted a report to the minister for health outlining its observations about the association’s activities. It also recommended taking legal action against the association.
Thit Htoo Lwin is a widely read Myanmar-language website that repackages articles from media outlets. The article in question was referenced as from army-run Myawaddy Daily. However, Myawaddy said it had not published the article. The Myanmar Times traced the report to an un-bylined article in state-run Mandalay daily Yadanabone on November 5. U Soe Naing, the editor of Yadanabone, which is published by the Ministry of Information, said the article came from a freelance reporter in Yangon but declined to give any further details.
Consumer Protection Association chair U Ba Oak Khaing said the article was wrong but the group would defend itself in any legal case that arises. “The story [republished] on the blog is not attributed to any reporter, and we made no such statement. We’ve asked them to publish a correction.”
In turn, he has accused Dr Tun Zaw of trying to discredit the association and said it was considering legal action against the Ministry of Health.
The association was established last year to complement government efforts to tackle the production and sale of unhealthy and dangerous foods in cooperation with the FDA.
But the anticipated cooperation has been lacking, as the two organisations have been in dispute because the FDA has taken no action over the results of laboratory tests that the association believes show food products may be tainted.
In one recent case, the association sent fish paste to be tested at the FDA laboratory after receiving eyewitness reports that fish paste manufacturers are using chemical fertiliser when producing fish paste. The fertiliser, the association alleges, is used to speed up the production process, which would normally take six to 12 months.
While the tests confirmed the presence of urea in the fish paste in the three samples, the FDA refused to reveal the exact amount, saying it was within the normal range. The association then went public with the results, causing anger in both the FDA and sections of the business community.
“The FDA test results were unclear and did not provide the information we need to know so we were not happy,” U Ba Oak Khaing said. “But then we were attacked many times over this case. Some people said we were trying to harm some businesspeople because after we told the media that we discovered urea in the fish paste sales slowed down. The businessmen were so angry about that and said the products had been declared safe by the FDA.”
U Ba Oak Khaing said the association also plans to build its own lab to test food products because it does not trust the results from the FDA.
“We are fighting with the FDA on paper but we did not fight their officials personally,” he said. “But now they have attacked our association and me personally ... I can’t understand why they are behaving like this.”
source: The Myanmar Times
No comments:
Post a Comment