|
Distributor claims Meiji products in Vietnam are safe
All Meiji baby powder milk products currently available on Vietnamese market are radiation-free, and are thus safe for consumption, Meiji’s official distributor in Vietnam confirmed yesterday.
Meiji’s distributor Huong Thuy Co Ltd made the confirmation just one day after Meiji Holdings, a Japanese major dairy firm, said it was recalling some 400,000 cans of Meiji Step formula that contained radioactive cesium-134 and cesium-137, according to English language Japan Today Newspaper.
Huong Thuy Co said among the Meiji products being sold in Vietnam, only Meiji Gold 1 and Gold 2 are directly imported from Japan, while other products are from Australia.
“Those imported from Japan have undergone comprehensive radiation checks by the Ho Chi Minh City Nuclear Center to ensure that they are safe to be circulated in the market,” the distributing company assured.
Many worried consumers have begun to return Meiji milk cans to the stores where they bought the products upon learning of the radioactive contamination.
“A few customers returned the products to us this morning,” the owner of a milk shop in District 3 told Tuoi Tre on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Nguyen Thi Huynh Mai, deputy head of the Food Safety and Hygiene Agency under the municipal Department of Health, said her agency will conduct tests to determine whether Meiji products on sale in stores and supermarkets citywide are contaminated with cesium radiation.
Earlier on December 6, Japan's Meiji Holdings announced that radioactive cesium fallout from the country’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant was found in its powder milk.
The level of contamination ranged from 22 to 31 Becquerel a kilogram, far below the allowable 200-becquerel limit, Japan’s Kyodo News quoted Meiji as saying.
The contaminated milk cans were produced between March and April at a factory in Saitama Prefecture, some 200 kilometers from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, where reactors were sent into meltdown in the aftermath of the March 11 quake and tsunami, AFP reported.
Meiji said it suspected that cesium might have got into the powdered milk during the drying process, rather than from the raw materials.
The dairy company said it will exchange around 400,000 Meiji cans exclusively on sale in Japan for free.
Meiji spokesperson told AP that all of its products exported to Vietnam are radiation-free.
vir
|
