ANSVSA: "Romania is in no way affected by the fish scandal"

Europe is going through a new crisis in the food industry, caused by the misleading labeling of fish, meaning that expensive fish is replaced with cheaper varieties, of lower quality. The investigators have found that one third of the products in stores and restaurants do not meet the information on the label.

Elena Sharoikina, head of the d Russian National Association for Genetic Security, explained, according to the romanian.ruvr.ru, website, the process which the producers were using to cheat the European alert system in the food sector: "Mackerel can be processed to make it look like eel filet, which is a far more expensive sort of fish. Anything is possible: flavors, the coloring agents do their job. Most likely this situation will continue, because the food is getting increasingly expensive, and producers have more and more incentives to substitute cheaper raw materials to the expensive ones. Large quantities of fish come from Asia. And over they do business as they please. And in order to sell a product, they stick another label on it, to make more money".

According to the Russian expert, this situation has most likely been going on for a few years already, but has only been found now: "The fish industry is big business, and the main goal is to increase the revenue of producers. Europe has run into the fact that the system for the control of imported output has deficiencies. Since the food scandals have been occurring one after another lately, it is clear that the issues in question will be reviewed and there will be an attempt to find another system to supervise the market".

The scandal concerning the misleading labeling of fish is part of a bigger chain of events on a European level, such as the toxic milk in Serbia, the toxins in the Spanish cheese, and the horse meat in France, the milk with aflatoxin and the chicken infested with Salmonella in Romania.

Concerning Romania, the officials of the National Sanitary Veterinary and Food Safety Authority told us that Romania is not at risk of being involved in or affected by this new row: "We conducted an investigation this very week, together with the National Fishing and Aquaculture Agency (ANPA), and we found no irregularities".

"Moreover, we will start a series of investigations prior to the Easter holidays, to avoid any risk. In spite of this, we need to take into account the fact that what is happening in Europe at the moment, is more a fraud which does not endanger people's health, and it can't extend to Romania, for the simple reason that Romania does not important significant quantities of expensive fish", an official of the ANSVSA told us.