Confusion reigns over DCD and Botulinum in milk :

Health Ministry says no more ads, calls upon public to drink liquid milk

by Carol Aloysius

Amidst conflicting views and public confusion over the safety of certain imported milk food products, the Health Ministry this week told the public to drink local liquid milk while it began tightening the lid on imported milk foods. On Wednesday instructions were sent to the Customs Food inspectors to withhold the release of any imported milk powders to the market, till they were proved untainted by the agro chemical Dicyanadiamide (DCD) and Chostridium botulinum, a high concentrate of Whey Protein.

The Health Ministry also banned advertisements on all milk powder in the media (TV, radio, newspapers etc) indefinitely till further tests proved they were safe for consumption.

The following day(Thursday, Aug. 8) the Court of Appeal issued an interim order restraining Fonterra Brands Pvt Ltd from advertising that their milk products were 100 percent safe for consumer consumption. The restraint order was made by petitioner Kamal Saliya Samarasinghe from Matale who said that Fonterra Brands Pvt Ltd had misled the public into believing their milk was 100 percent safe for consumption, while being aware of its hazardous health risks following tests by the Industrial Technology Institute showing evidence of DCD. To quote advertisements that appeared in most leading newspapers in the country just prior to this ban, Fonterra Brands Sri Lanka, stated,” None of the Fonterra brands sold here contain Whey Protein concentrates. Anchor and all our other products don’t use this dairy ingredient. Our products are 100 percent safe. None of Fonterra’s branded products was affected by the quality issue announced by the New Zealand Cooperative on August 3, 2013. This was an isolated issue affecting three batches of a specialised wholesale dairy ingredient Whey Protein Concentrate 80 (WPC80). WPC80 is marketed by Fonterra as a wholesale ingredient for food beverage and animal food manufacture as a business - business transaction.”

Addressing the media Thursday, Fonterra Marketing Director Leon Clement maintained this stance, and argued that the ITI tests were inaccurate as the method used by ITI was unscientific, since it did not have the Femdam Mass Spectrometry Machine to test the milk products for DCD.

In a telephone interview Human Resources Corporate Affairs, Director Roshan Kulasooriya told the Sunday Observer, “We have strictly adhered to the test method followed by the Ministry of Health for food safety. These are internationally accepted procedures that we have adopted for a long time. None of the tests on the Ministry of Health guidelines have shown any trace of DCD. If they were contaminated why didn’t Customs officials withhold our previously released stocks of imported milk from New Zealand?”

ITI tested batches

The ITI tested anchor 1 Plus batch No 107610163, anchor Full Cream batch 0605-C 0883 11-21 produced by Fonterra , Maliban Non Fat Milk batch No 13074 AI imported by Maliban Milk Products Ltd and Diamond Milk Powder batch NW1F1PDX1 PM imported by Mohamad Ali Milk Products Company. All these products tested positive, ITI sources said.

Clements said the company would withdraw the batches said to be tainted with the agro-chemical within 48 hours from the shelves of supermarkets, and other retail outlets. HR Director Kulasooriya, in his interview, however said all the suspect batches estimated to be around 50,000 could be removed from open market shelves within 24 hours as the Company had already deployed most of its sales force islandwide to do this.

Food Act

The decision to recall the batches of milk powder said to have DCD was made by the Director General Health Services Dr P.G. Maheepala using how powers under the Food Act No. 26 of 1980 and considering the ITI report. Ministry sources said they will be made available in the market only after further investigations with the help of the ITI and a leading lab in Singapore are conducted and the tests prove negative.

Health officials reiterated the need for the public also to switch to fresh local milk as they were safe and did not contain DCD or Botulinum. “The two local milk products tested at the ITI so far namely, Highland Milk powder and Pelawatte milk powder, did not have DCD”, the Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA) which has pledged to promote local milks and support, the government said.

Speculation

The Health Ministry’s decision to recall the suspected brands of milk powder imported from New Zealand and Australia and another country, while tightening scrutiny on all milk foods including local milks for DCD and Botulinum, ended weeks of speculation and public confusion as conflicting reports by the Health Ministry and importing companies and Industrial Technology Institute (ITI) escalated causing unnecessary panic and anxiety among consumers.

Mother and housewife Mrs. Neliya Pathirage told the Sunday Observer she and several other housewives were in a quandary after Anchor full cream and Anchor 1 Plus as well as Maliban and Diamond were found to have contaminating agents.” We were anxiously waiting for a final answer from the Health Ministry to end our confusion so that we could stop using the milk brands said to be contaminated and switch to other milk foods”, she said.

Customs

Until Wednesday August 7 customs officials also admitted they were in the dark as to what the ground situation was as no instructions regarding inspections of the milk had been sent from the Health Ministry’s top brass. “Nevertheless they said they were holding the stocks of imported milk powders in their container yards indefinitely, and would not be releasing any stocks to the market till such instructions were received.

When contacted on Friday morning, Director Customs Inspections Leslie Gamini told the Sunday Observer, “We have now received official instructions from the Director General Health Services (DGHS), who has informed our food inspectors to analyse all imported milk powder for DCD and Botulinum and not to release them until they are proved to be free of such contaminants.

He also directed all customs officials to be vigilant and to direct all imported milk powders to authorised officers to be inspected by food inspectors before releasing them to the market.”

GMOA’s suggestions

The Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA) told the Sunday Observer that while welcoming the news as a “victory for the GMOA”, it also wished to inform the public that the Association had written to the Health Minister to suspend imports of DCD contaminated milk foods after the ITI under the Science Technology Ministry had scientifically proved that some brands of imported milk contained DCD.

The sources charged that the Health Ministry had instead accepted the report issued by a foreign company and issued a media release that the particular imported milk products were safe thus violating the Food Act and putting public health at risk. “We hope to take up this matter soon,” GMOA spokesman Dr. Nalin Herath told the Sunday Observer.

He said, the GMOA has also submitted ten suggestions to the Health Minister. They include: Promotion of fresh milk; Acceleration of the Human Nutrition Training Program at the Post Graduate Institute of Medicine (PGIM); Establishment of a Toxicology Speciality in the Health system; Establishment of a Toxicological Centre within the Health Ministry; Establishment of an Inter-Sectoral Committee including all relevant stakeholders and the GMOA as a partner to promote fresh milk consumption.

“We have also suggested that future investigations should be done in collaboration with the ITI which has a state-of-the-art lab, foreign labs should be used only if the ITI lacks the technology for some tests”, he said.

He further said the GMOA was also pressing for starting immediate inquiries against Health officials for making various statements misleading the public with regard to the toxic substances found in the imported milk powders.

ITI Chairman Prof. W. Abeywickrama told the Sunday Observer that six samples of imported milk products and four samples of local milk products had been tested at the ITI lab. “We found six imported milk powder were contaminated.

The two local milk samples we tested had no contamination . The tests are still in progress,” he said. Secretary Public Health Union Islandwide A.M. Senarath said he and his team of 1,800 food inspectors are ready to go into all the supermarkets and sales outlets where imported milk foods are being sold to inspect them for contaminated substances.

“Samples will be tested in our lab as well as the Medical Research Institute and Government Analyst Lab”, he said.

Health Ministry spokesman W. Wanninayake however said that the removal of the suspect milk powders would be the responsibility of the companies importing them.

“The Health Ministry need not waste money on this exercise. The companies themselves will have to remove the milk powders found to be contaminated”, he said.

He said that the Provincial and Regional Health Directors, the Colombo Municipal Council Chief Medical Officer, and officers from the National Institute of Health Sciences had been informed via a circular that they should oversee that the companies carry out their responsibility well.

“We will be sending a few of our own inspectors as well to observe and see that everything is done properly”.

GMOA spokesman Dr. Herath however said that any circular sent to the Provincial and Regional Directors of Health in this respect would have to be first studied carefully. “We have to see if they meet our requirements”, he stressed.

Health hazards

Asked about the health hazards of posed by DCD Fonterra sources told the Sunday Observer, “Any toxicity level found in the milk powder is “ very minute - far less than the tolerable limit set by international standards.” They quoted a report by food safety experts citing the 2012 Journal of Chromatography - as an example.

Local health specialists however insist that toxicity even in a minute form is harmful to the body. “ DCD is an agro- chemical”, Dr. Nalin Herath said. ‘It is poison.

There is no mild term to describe poison. A Consultant Paediatrician from the Kalubowila Teaching Hospital observed that although the effects of toxicity consumption in milk would not be immediate since they were relatively in very low dosages, still in the future Sri Lanka could have a population suffering from illnesses of unknown origins which could be traced back to DCD.

She said that it was too early to comment on Botulinum since it was something very new and required much more study.

Will the importers of the suspect brands comply with the orders given them by the Health Ministry and how soon? As the public awaits the outcome Health Ministry sources said it was up to the Regional and Provincial Council Directors and others overseeing the exercise to make sure every single suspect brand is removed from the open market.

“All of them can go into any market and inspect the shelves as they are authorised to do so”, a spokesman said. A question also being asked is, if the public takes the Health Ministry’s advice to heart, will there be enough to go round? And, will this milk be completely free of contamination and adulteration?