Text 14680, 101 rader
Skriven 2008-10-04 11:46:00 av JIM WELLER (1:123/140)
Ärende: Bad shrimp 3
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'These types of products are commonly used in Asia,' says Bridson.
'The farmers experiment. Someone chucks something in his tanks and
gets good results. He tells his mates and the product becomes
mainstream in the area - whether it actually does anything or not.'

Mr Huong's Super Star contains a chemical commonly used as a '
nutritional enhancer'. It is marketed by the company Bayer in Europe
as 'Butaphosphan'.

On Bayer's website all I can find is a recommendation that it be
used for injecting into sheep, dogs and cats suffering from 'stress,
over-exertion or exhaustion' and as a tonic in cases of weakness or
anaemia in animals. (Note that Bayer does not supply the chemical in
Vietnam nor market it as a 'nutritional enhancer'.)

Some chemicals may do more harm than good  -  and not just to the
image of the tropical prawn. Super Star also contains methyl
hydroxybenzoate, an anti-fungal preservative which is banned in
France and Australia. It has been linked to cancer in some beauty
treatments.

The most dubious thing we found in the Huong's arsenal of chemicals
was in a pot named 'N300' - a 'medicine for digestion and liver
function', made by a Vietnamese company called Cong Ty TNHH.

It contained beta glucan, a harmless component of many human
nutrition supplements, but also norfloxacin, an antibiotic usually
used to treat gonorrhea and urinary tract infections in humans. It
is 'under watch' by the U.S. Federal Drug Administration because of
increased reports of nasty side effects, including damage to
tendons.

Norfloxacin and its siblings, the fluoroquinolones, are banned for
use in animals for human consumption in the U.S., and subject to EU
controls on imports. Misuse of the fluoroquinolones is increasingly
blamed for the rise in resistance to anti-bacterial medicines, and
five floxacins are listed on the poster of banned chemicals we saw
at the entrance to the village.

Since 2005, Vietnam's fishery ministry has banned the use of
fluoroquinolones in fish destined for the North American market, but
not, apparently, for European countries. From the pile of empty N300
jars we saw, there is a lot of fluoroquinolone in the feed for Mr
Huong's prawns.

Numerous surveys have been done on the effects of the antibiotics
that are used in prawn farming across the world (31 different ones
were identified in Vietnam in a 2006 study, among a total of 155
different drugs).

They conclude that, although the antibiotics may rise to detectable
levels in the bodies of prawns, even greater damage is being done to
the environment in which they're farmed.

It's Mr Huong's daughter Thi Mai who may have problems when doctors
try to treat her for skin complaints, diarrhoea, respiratory
problems or other bacterial infections, including malaria. They may
find she is resistant to certain antibiotics.

But the effects could be felt further away. Scientists have
speculated that outbreaks of salmonella poisoning in Europe and the
U.S. may have been started by antibiotic-resistant salmonella in
farmed fish from Asia.

And the leaking of antibiotics and pesticides into the delicate
ecosystem in the coastal shallows of prawn-farming countries will
have effects no one yet fully understands.

Peter Bridson worries the chemicals will intensify, because the
water system is closed, with water being re-used from one farm to
another, leading to an even greater build-up of chemicals in the
prawn ponds.

So how worried should we prawn lovers be? Well, Food & Water Watch,
an American lobby group that has studied prawn farming for ten
years, issued a warning in its latest report.

It said: 'The negative effects of eating industrially-produced tiger
prawns may include neurological damage from ingesting chemicals such
as endosulfans, an allergic response to penicillin residues, or
infection by an antibiotic-resistant pathogen such as E-coli.'

That is a judicious 'may'.

What is certain is that banned or controlled chemicals are coming
into Europe with farmed prawns, despite the promises of governments
and retailers to stop this happening.

Last year, the EU rejected shipments of farmed prawn from six major
exporters in India because they contained chloramphenicol and
nitrofurans - two once-common antibiotics which are now known to be
carcinogenic. One causes leukaemia.

Cheers

YK Jim


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