German TV attacks quality of Vietnam fish exports

Farmed fish from Vietnam may be a fraud, with chemicals added to bulk up the weight of frozen pangasius fillets by 20 percent, a leading German television channel charged Wednesday.

Laboratory tests on 14 fillets described on the packaging as free of hydrophilic chemicals showed three did in fact contain citric acid, said ARD public television in its ARD Exclusiv current affairs programme.

The chemical makes the fillet attract water so that it is heavier and more valuable when weighed.

In the programme, The Pangasius Deceit, set to air Wednesday evening, ARD said phosphates and nitrates were also used to increase the weight of pangasius.

The fish is mainly farmed in ponds in Vietnam, with part of the industry located in Thailand. Germany is a major buyer, taking 40,000 tonnes per year, according to the programme.

The channel said lab testers also found listeria bacteria in five of the 14 fillets, but below the legal threshold.

ARD also charged that aquaculture was environmentally destructive, with 1 million tonnes of fish waste spilled annually into the Mekong river, and that the fish were killed in a cruel way by being packed in water-filled buckets.

Tags: Vietnam fish exports

Posted by VBN on Mar 11 2011. Filed under Sea food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry