The State Foreign Health Services alerted the Department of Health on July 14 about the entry into Catalonia of a shipment of watermelons -from Morocco- highly contaminated with a pesticide. The alert was issued 11 days after the merchandise was distributed, since it was put up for sale on July 3 at Mercabarna.
When the inspectors went to the big market and other distribution points, the lot had already been distributed.
The company that made this acquisition (whose name is unknown) imported 26,989 kilos of watermelons, which could not be located for destruction.
The state services notified the Public Health Agency of Catalonia late of the detection of the shipment of watermelons, as can be deduced from the reconstruction of the events offered by the Department of Health.
The batch contained traces of an insecticide (methomyl) at levels that exceeded 25 times the maximum residue limit allowed in European legislation, according to the analysis of a Foreign Health control at the Almería border point. The incidence would be described as “serious” by the system of rapid exchange of information on food (Rasff, for its acronym in English), coordinated by the Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition (Aesan), in contact with the EU and the communities autonomous.
After being alerted on July 14 by the Almería border point, the Public Health Agency of Catalonia immediately reported the incident to the Barcelona health authorities so that they could monitor and withdraw the product.
“Both in Mercabarna and in other establishments, control actions were carried out,” says the Department of Health. Thus, “it was verified that the Mercabarna company had received the merchandise on July 3” and that on July 14, when this market received the communication from the Administration, “it no longer had stocks of the product involved in its establishment ”.
A total of 26,989 kilos of watermelons were distributed, which were distributed among customers (twelve in Catalonia, one in Madrid and four in France).
The Mercabarna operator contacted its customers to notify them of the facts and try to recover the products that had not yet been marketed, for their subsequent destruction. However, customers stated that they no longer had the product in question.
For its part, the Department of Health reveals that Aesan published the notification on July 17, the date on which it was informed of the data that the Foreign Health border point in Almería had already advanced (two weeks after the distribution of food ).
Regarding this delay, an Aesan spokeswoman told this newspaper that she was unaware of the reasons for the delay, although she pointed out that “Foreign Health would take samples and until the result is in, the product is not withdrawn.”
The Public Health Agency has carried out various checks to find the watermelons in the places where the product is sold. And “for now, these actions of official control are reiterating the non-existence of the product in the establishments.”
Fresh foods such as watermelon “are products that are consumed in a few days after purchase,” says Salut sources.
On the contrary, commercial and traceability documentation related to the batch in question has been found, but no watermelon has been found, so “it has not been possible to carry out any control to take samples”.
Nor is there any evidence from the epidemiological surveillance services that someone has been affected by ingesting this product. The same Aesan spokesman added that “the sanitary toxicological reference limits were not exceeded.”
“The maximum residue limit for pesticide residues in food or feed serves to protect all vulnerable consumers. Non-compliance with the maximum permitted pesticide residue limits cannot be frivolously minimized,” says Koldo Hernández, an expert in monitoring pesticides from the organization Ecologistas en Acción.
