The alert for Moroccan strawberries with hepatitis that weren’t consumed was magnified by the protests within the countryside | Society | EUROtoday

The EU Rapid Food Alert System (RASFF) launched an alert this Monday for a batch of strawberries with hepatitis A from Morocco that had arrived in Spain. These varieties of procedures happen dozens of instances on daily basis within the EU—84 have been issued since March 1—and function communication for the well being authorities of every nation, who solely go them on to shoppers if there’s a well being threat. In the case of strawberries, they haven’t reached shoppers, so nobody is affected. Despite this, the precise has taken benefit of the scenario to amplify the alert within the midst of rural protests. Experts level out that on daily basis there are dozens of comparable meals alerts within the EU that display that meals security controls work.

The Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition (AESAN) – of the Ministry of Social Rights – obtained the notification after a management carried out by the General Subdirectorate of Foreign Health, depending on Health, on a consignment of strawberries from Morocco destined for Andalusia. The AESAN alerted the Andalusian Government to proceed to take away the batch, which entered by means of Algeciras. Neither the Ministry of Social Rights, nor the Ministry of Health, nor the Board are conscious right now that there’s anybody affected by this case.

“These types of alerts are common and are intended for the food authorities of each country,” says Miguel Ángel Lurueña, physician in Food Science and Technology. In truth, in simply the primary six days of March, 84 alerts of this sort have been issued – and that, making an allowance for that on days 2 and three none have been despatched because it was a weekend – for meals with harmful ranges of pesticides. , salmonella or parasites, or for holding plastics. “States carry out controls and remove contaminated products. If they consider that the food has reached the consumer, they issue an alert to consumers.” That has not occurred on this case.

Juan José Rodríguez, professor of Nutrition on the Autonomous University of Barcelona and member of the Spanish Society for Food Safety (Sesal), agrees: “If there is hepatitis A, it means that the strawberries have been in direct contact with fecal matter, or due to poor handling. by people carrying the disease. The food control system works, because Foreign Health has done the analysis at the border and has found the pathogen. The problem has been magnified because we have a conflict with the Spanish countryside over the import of products from Morocco.”

In the midst of the battle between farmers and ranchers—who’re protesting, amongst different issues, in opposition to the importation of cheaper merchandise with fewer controls—the case has served to fire up a sure meals nationalism. According to Europa Press, the PP delegation within the European Parliament is engaged on drafting a parliamentary query to the European Commission on this regard, whereas Ciudadanos will ask for extra controls linked to the Tangier Med port. At the identical time, the far-right MEP Jorge Buxadé has demanded to the European Commission the “absolute, immediate and complete prohibition of the import of strawberries from Morocco.” The Commission responded this Wednesday that the berries haven’t reached shoppers and has specified that “rapid actions” in opposition to these items past Spanish territory should not vital.

The president of the Junta de Andalucía, Juan Manuel Moreno, has gone additional and has blamed the Government despite the fact that it has detected the pathogen earlier than reaching shoppers: “Customs controls failed, those strawberries should not have entered Spain , and we ask the Government to examine the protocols and avoid these situations, which occur when products from third countries arrive in our country. “You have to act and control what comes in.” The Ministries of Agriculture, Social Rights and Health level out that the controls work and permit a majority of these issues to be detected to keep away from affected folks.

Irrigation with sewage

The scenario has been worsening since this Tuesday, when the Valencian Farmers Association (AVA-Asaja) demanded “urgent measures” from the central authorities in opposition to what it thought-about “a danger to public health and that may have appeared in the food due to irrigation.” farms with sewage.” The group has despatched a letter to the Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, to ask him to “urgently ask the Government of Morocco for explanations and specify what measures it intends to take to prevent this type of situation from occurring again.”

In any case, these conditions not solely happen with what’s imported, but in addition with what’s exported. “It must be clear that controls in the EU are higher than in other countries, but food safety failures also occur here: for example, in recent weeks an alert was launched for hepatitis A in Spanish mussels that arrived in Italy ”Lurueña remembers.

According to a count by Professor of Nutrition Jose Miguel Soriano, in the last four years there have been nine notifications in the EU warning of the presence of the hepatitis A pathogen in food. For example, in 2023 it was detected in live mussels from Italy and in frozen cultured blueberries from Poland. From 2020 to 2022, other notifications came for frozen fruit from Belgium; of raspberries from Bulgaria and Poland; of clams from Italy; of dried tomatoes from Turkey (in 2020 and 2021), and in live mussels from Italy.

Hepatitis A is transmitted when food is consumed that has been in contact with human feces of an infected person, that is, either by irrigation with fecal water or by poor handling during transport. Food health experts recommend washing fruits well with water and bleach to try to eliminate these types of pathogens.

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