Food Safety Focus (135th Issue, October 2017) – Food Incident Highlight

Brazilian Meats and Falsified Health Certificate Follow-up

Last month, when following-up on an earlier complaint lodged by a food importer, the Centre for Food Safety (CFS) received the Brazilian authorities’ confirmation on a falsification of health certificate involving imported frozen chicken feet which was pet food. Further investigations revealed there were nine more similar consignments of imported Brazilian frozen pet food including pig/cattle offal products and pig feet. The concerned importers revealed that all 10 consignments were shipped out of Hong Kong. The CFS referred the case to the Hong Kong Police for investigation and issued a press release on 21 September 2017.

To safeguard food safety, importers are required to exercise their responsibility to implement verifications of health certificates. Besides sourcing meat/meat products from reliable suppliers, importers must obtain health certificates issued by relevant eligible exporting countries and ensure the meat is fit for human consumption. The public are advised to properly wash and thoroughly cook all meats and offal before consumption to minimise food safety risks.