Thailand ready to halt imports of Australian salad

A senior Thai Food and Drug official says Thailand is ready to halt Australian pre-packed salads if border food safety officers detect salmonella.

Australian salad not popular in Thailand.

Australian salad not popular in Thailand. Source: AAP

Thailand is ready to halt imports of prepacked salad products from Australia if salmonella bacteria is detected by Thai food safety officials.

The Thai Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in an official statement seen by AAP, said the FDA ordered all food and drug checkpoints to monitor the import of salad products into the country.

Praphon Angtrakool, FDA deputy secretary general, said investigations had found two consignments of pre-packed salad mix from Victorian-based Tripod Farmers, had been imported into Thailand.
Praphon said the importer had sold all the concerned products and had issued a recall.

On Tuesday, Australian Assistant Secretary of Plant Export Operations, Chris Parker, told a Senate estimates hearing that Thailand had been one of three countries that may have imported products from the farm linked to the salmonella outbreak.

In Victoria more than 50 people had been diagnosed with a rare strain of the bacteria after eating pre-packed salads sourced from Tripod Farmers.

Dr Parker said he was only aware of the three affected countries, including Thailand, heightening food safety inspection.

Thailand's Praphon said monitoring was continuing, and if imported products were found not to be in compliance with the standard or might pose a health risk to consumers, they would not be allowed to be imported and would be recalled from the market.
Earlier media reports said Thailand was taking steps to ban the pre-packed salad mix from Australia.

The reports triggered confusion in Australian trade circles over whether a trade ban had come into effect.

Tripod Farmers was forced to recall 30 of its loose leaf salad products from supermarket shelves after the Victorian Health Department traced a number of salmonella cases to its products.


Share
2 min read

Published

Updated

Source: AAP


Share this with family and friends


Get SBS News daily and direct to your Inbox

Sign up now for the latest news from Australia and around the world direct to your inbox.

By subscribing, you agree to SBS’s terms of service and privacy policy including receiving email updates from SBS.

Download our apps
SBS News
SBS Audio
SBS On Demand

Listen to our podcasts
An overview of the day's top stories from SBS News
Interviews and feature reports from SBS News
Your daily ten minute finance and business news wrap with SBS Finance Editor Ricardo Gonçalves.
A daily five minute news wrap for English learners and people with disability
Get the latest with our News podcasts on your favourite podcast apps.

Watch on SBS
SBS World News

SBS World News

Take a global view with Australia's most comprehensive world news service
Watch the latest news videos from Australia and across the world