The Valencian Farmers Association (AVA-Asaja) has shown its “concern” and has demanded that the central government and the European Union (EU) “urgent measures” following the notification issued this Monday alerting of the detection at an entry point in Spain of the “presence of Hepatitis A in strawberries from Morocco.”
According to the notification issued on the RASFF (Rapid Alert System Feed and Food) community portal, the risk decision is “serious” because exceeds the “maximum allowed level absence/25g” of this substance which, according to AVA-Asaja, “poses a danger to public health and may have appeared in the food due to irrigation of farms with sewage.”
Given this new health alert for fruit and vegetable imports from this third country, the organization chaired by Cristóbal Aguado has sent a letter to the Minister of AgricultureLuis Planas, to request that you “urgently ask the Government of Morocco for explanations and specify what measures you plan to take to prevent this type of situation from occurring again.”
AVA-Asaja has urged Planas to “transfer the competent authorities of the European Union that all strawberries that come from Morocco have a thorough health inspection and, if more health alerts are detected in other fruits and vegetables from third countries, the controls will be extended to these products, because the health of consumers is at stake.”
The claim has also been sent to Brussels for address the problem in community institutionsaccording to the agricultural organization in a statement.
AVA-Asaja has also informed the main consumer associations of the Valencian Community of this health alert – the Valencian Association of Consumers and Users (Avacu), the Association of Housewives and Consumers Tyrius and the Union of Consumers of the Valencian Community – and to the Official College of Physicians of Valencia, due to the risk it represents to human health.
The entity recalls that, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), hepatitis A is an inflammation of the liver due to the hepatitis A virus (HAV), which is spread mainly when an uninfected (and unvaccinated) person ingests water or food contaminated by feces from an infected person.