Sg Review, 22 Sep 2008, Law Sin Ling
There are signs to suggest, following the actions taken by the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) of Singapore in the face of the melamine scandal, that the agency has much to do towards gaining a higher degree of faith from the public.
The first concrete sniff of the recent scandal broke clean when the Centre For Food Safety of Hong Kong detected and released results of their tests between the 15 and 16 September.
AVA announced on the 17 September the recall of Yili products pending tests by AVA. AVA also stated that it was conducting tests on "other imported milk and dairy products from China".
2 days later, AVA confirmed the contamination of Yili yogurt and Dutch Lady milk, and declared a cessation of import and sale of all milk and milk products from China.
On the same day, AVA issued a letter in the TODAY newspaper titled "Milk, dairy products safe: AVA" which bewilderingly stated that "milk and dairy products sold in Singapore are safe for consumption" even as AVA was conducting more tests for particular products from China.
This is a major gaffe as the AVA created confusion over whether products unsafe for sale are safe for consumption, no thanks to their inability to communicate their point unambiguously.
On the 21 September, AVA then announced that following the confirmed contamination of a third product (the popular White Rabbit Creamy Candy), a suspension was imposed on the import and sale of all milk and milk products from China including "milk, ice-cream, yoghurt, confectionery such as chocolates, biscuits and sweets".
AVA has failed to appreciate that most consumers would not automatically draw a relation between tainted milk from China, and sweets and biscuits (collectively called confectionery). This is especially since confectionery is not typically classified under dairy products.
Hence, the late explicit inclusion of confectionery 4 days after the first notice demonstrated the detrimental tunnel vision of AVA. So is the public to be told of potential problems with other products containing milk from China such as cakes, dougnuts, beverage powder (Milo, Ovaltine, etc), salad dressings, certain soups, and even certain food emulsifier and natural flavouring, only after AVA has completed their findings?
If AVA had reasons to suspect since the onset that all products using dairy ingredients from China may be implicated, a comprehensive statement with a broad coverage of suspected products should have been made public without waiting for the results of their tests.
There is no harm in transparently alerting the public to real and possible dangers while the AVA cautiously conducts investigations. On the other hand, failure to do so would make the actions of the AVA look reactionary and knee-jerk in nature.
Poor communication inevitably leads to suspicion of excessive introversion and incompetence. Poor planning though has no excuse at that level.
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