Alarm raised about contaminated grapes

The Thai Pesticide Alert Network (Thai-PAN) has warned about contamination of Shine Muscat grapes, after finding that most of the samples it collected contained hazardous chemical residues above maximum permitted levels.
Thai-PAN, the Thailand Consumers Council (TCC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revealed the laboratory test results on Thursday.
The TCC purchased 24 samples of the popular grapes from different locations including two from online shops, seven samples from fruit shops and fresh markets and 15 from supermarkets, on Oct 2 and 3. The prices ranged from 100 to 699 baht per kilogramme, said Prokchon Usap, the co-ordinator of Thai-PAN.
“Only nine samples could be identified as having been imported from China, while the country of origin of the remaining 15 samples could not be identified,” she said.
“It was quite shocking when we saw that 23 out of 24 samples had pesticide residues exceeding the legal limit.”
One sample was found to have chlorpyrifos, an insecticide that is banned in Thailand, she said.
Another 22 samples contained 14 harmful chemical residues that were above the safety limit of 0.01 mg/kg and yielded another 50 pesticide residues, 22 of which have not yet been declared under Thai law, such as triasulfuron, cyflumetofen, tetraconazole and fludioxonil.
“These pesticides remain in grapevine tissue, and removing them from plant tissue is unlikely to be easy,” said Ms Prokchon.
Thai-PAN and the TCC urged the Ministry of Public Health to take immediate action, including ordering importers and distributors to label the country of origin of imported Shine Muscat grapes.
The FDA has inspected 264 tonnes of imported Shine Muscat grapes, worth 72 million baht, so far this year, according to Dr Wattanasak Sornrung, director of the agency’s Food and Drug Inspection Checkpoint Division.
Only four samples were found to have pesticide residues above the safety standards, he said. The FDA has already taken legal action against those importers.
He said the FDA examined grapes that were brought in by train from China and found they were all safe.
“The FDA will take stronger action to check imported fresh fruit and vegetables,” he said. “More samples will be needed, and instead of waiting the current three days, the test findings must be released within 24 hours.”