Business
Bitter recriminations as fake coffee spreads
  • | nld, dtinews.vn | December 18, 2015 11:08 AM

Fake coffee, produced using sometimes harmful chemicals, is ironically being widely sold in the country’s coffee producing hub of Central Highlands province of Dak Lak and Ho Chi Minh City.

The official response has been unco-ordinated and ineffective in dealing with the problem.

 

Chemical store at Kim Bien Market

Chemicals to create coffee flavours can be easily found at Kim Bien Market, HCM City. These chemicals lack expiry date or point of origins but are readily available at VND380,000 (USD17) a litre. The sellers even give advice about how prospective coffee sellers go about their business.

"You only need a small amount of coffee and lots of ice. No one will be able to recognise that it's fake," a seller said.

The chemicals are also widely sold on the internet. The owner of one Facebook page claimed that they had chemicals to fake various coffees including Moka and Robusta. According to the page, they can create up to 320 coffee cups with two litres of the chemicals.

Nguyen Thu Phuong, a cafe owner in HCM City, said, "We spent at least VND3m to have five litres of good coffee. They must have use dangerous chemicals in order to create five litres for a few hundred thousand VND."

According to HCM City Plant Protection Department, 92 coffee processing facilities operate but they lack the ability to deal with fake manufacturers.

Tran Ngoc Thanh, head of Dak Lak Province's Agro Forestry Fisheries Quality Assurance Department, under the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, said the responsibility belonged to the health sector. Meanwhile, Tran Van Tiet, vice head of provincial Food Administration, under the Department of Health, claimed that shops such as department stores are responsibilities of the Department of Industry and Trade.

Nguyen Dao Chi, vice head of the Market Surveillance Agency, denied the claim, saying that they only checked the invoices and business operation, and food quality were responsibility of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.

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