Sausages on display at a Co.opMart supermarket outlet in Ho Chi Minh City.

The Ministry of Health’s Food Safety and Hygiene Bureau Wednesday said it has not found documents to show sausages containing a toxic substance have been imported into the country as feared earlier.

“It is not known if the product has been imported,” the bureau’s Director Nguyen Cong Khan said.

He said provincial health departments have nevertheless been told to inform retailers and check if they are selling them.

“Retailers have been instructed to stop selling the product and hand over samples for tests if it is found,” he said.

According to the European Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF), France has warned that recently processed batches of Ballering sausages contain PBC – a substance similar to dioxin – have been exported to many countries including Vietnam.

Khan said PBC is not allowed in cooking in Vietnam.

Meanwhile, retailers and consumers said they have yet to see Ballering sausages in the market.

“Foreign sausages are usually bigger and more expensive, at VND120,000-180,000,” an employee of a supermarket on Thai Ha Street in Hanoi said. “It is hard to sell them.”

Deputy Director of Big C Thang Long, Nguyen Thai Dung, said his supermarket does not sell the product, while manager of Fivimart Dai La, Vu Huyen Nhung, said she has never heard of the brand.

Phung Danh Truong, media manager of Duc Viet Joint-Venture Company, itself a sausage maker, said he too has never seen Ballering sausages.

“Around 20 brands of sausages are sold in Hanoi,” he said. “Most of them are local products which are preferred for their taste and lower prices.”

“Imported sausages are rare and cannot compete with domestic products,” he said.

A visit by Thanh Nien to several grocery stores in Hanoi stocking imported products failed to turn up Ballering sausages.

Me Buu grocery store on Nguyen Ngoc Nai Street said they only sold Bastides sausages from France, while Western Canned Food on Hai Ba Trung Street sold Emborg sausages imported from Denmark.

In Ho Chi Minh City, the director of a Co.opMart outlet said though he has never heard of Ballering he would look into the issue.

Duong Thi Thien Trang of Big C also said her supermarket outlets in HCMC only sold domestic sausages.

Toxic substance

“PBC is a chemical substance that is used as an insulating fluid in transformers and capacitors,” Do Thanh Bai of the Institute of Industrial Chemicals said.

He said PBC is among 12 organic substances listed in the Stockholm Convention as “hard to biodegrade” and is set to be banned globally by 2025.

“PBC is poisonous and can cause cancer,” he said.

According to a research project by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, the substance easily contaminates water and air and is poisonous to humans and the environment.

Reported by Thanh Nien staff