Pesticide-tainted bananas sold at E-Mart

By Lee Hyo-sik

E-Mart, Korea’s largest discount store chain, sold imported bananas tainted with high levels of pesticide, causing grave concern among consumers over food safety.

E-Mart and Shinsegae Food, which imported the bananas from the Philippines, said they did not know the banana skins contained pesticide residue exceeding the legally-allowed level, stressing that they immediately withdrew the Chiquita brand fruit from shelves when notified by the food safety authorities.

The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, which approved the import of the tainted bananas, has come under criticism for its inadequate monitoring of imported agricultural products.

According to E-Mart and the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, 167 boxes of Chiquita bananas weighing 2.17 tons were sold at 59 outlets in Gyeonggi Province and Gangwon Province on Oct. 16. One box weighs 13 kilograms. Shinsegae Food had previously delivered a total of 1,000 boxes to E-Mart stores.

When notified by the Gyeonggi Provincial Health and Environment Institute that the banana skins contained 1.79 milligrams of iprodione - a hydantoin fungicide - per kilogram (89.5 times the permissible level of 0.02 milligrams), the retailer withdrew the remaining 833 boxes of the bananas.

The ministry had previously allowed the importation of the fruit after examining documents and conducting a sensory test. When bananas are shipped to retail stores, municipal administrations are required to take samples and check whether they contain pests or a high level of pesticides.

According to E-Mart, the bananas were on the shelves only for a couple of hours, stressing that the retailer was unaware of the high level of pesticide.

``We put the bananas on sale in early hours of Oct. 16, but several hours later, we were told that the fruit contained pesticide exceeding the legal limit,’’ a E-Mart spokesman said. ``We immediately sent the remaining bananas to our warehouse in Yeoju, Gyeonggi Province. They were then taken by the Junggu District Office in Seoul.’’

He said the store immediately notified customers who purchased the bananas to return them. ``We offered refunds to shoppers that returned the fruit. We currently do not sell the brand in question. Bananas sold at our stores are safe.’’

The ministry admitted that it only checked the import documents and conducted a sensory test on the fruit, before approving the import of the bananas.

``It is impossible to test every single imported fruit in reality,’’ a ministry spokeswoman said. ``We previously conducted thorough inspections on this brand of bananas in the past and did not detect high levels of pesticide. Since then, we have only been doing sensory tests. Municipal administrations are also required to test imported agricultural products after they are approved here.”

The spokeswoman said the ministry will strengthen its inspection on imported bananas and other fruit. ``Importers have to pay our test expenses, meaning that in this case, Shinsegae Food will have to pay more to finance our extensive inspection. In addition, the firm has to store imports longer at warehouses, which causes an additional financial burden.”

Shinsegae Food said it imported the bananas from the Southeast Asian nation on Oct. 4.

"Most of the bananas we import from the Philippines do not have a problem. Only the ones produced at one particular farm contain the high level of pesticide. We are trying to figure out what happened there,’’ a company spokesman said.

He said Korea’s standards toward residual pesticide on imported fruits are too strict, saying that it has become harder to find foreign producers who can meet the country’s rigorous legal requirements. "The permissible level used to be 5 milligrams per kilogram, but from Sept. 12 imported bananas have to contain no more than 0.02 milligrams. Under the previous standard, the bananas causing this issue now would have caused no problems.”

The spokesman said Japan’s permissible level is 10 milligrams per kilogram, while China has no standard for the level of iprodione, stressing that the company will have a harder time finding foreign producers that can meet domestic requirements.