The EU Rapid Food Alert System (RASFF) launched an alert this Monday for a batch of strawberries with hepatitis A from Morocco that had arrived in Spain.
These types of procedures occur dozens of times every day in the EU—84 have been issued since March 1—and serve as communication for the health authorities of each country, who only pass them on to consumers if there is a health risk.
In the case of strawberries, they have not reached consumers, so no one is affected.
Despite this, the right has taken advantage of the situation to magnify the alert in the midst of rural protests.
Experts point out that every day there are dozens of similar food alerts in the EU that demonstrate that food safety controls work.
The Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition (AESAN) - of the Ministry of Social Rights - received the notification after a control carried out by the General Subdirectorate of Foreign Health, dependent on Health, on a consignment of strawberries from Morocco destined for Andalusia.
“Presence of Hepatitis A in Moroccan strawberries,” the alert says, literally.
The AESAN alerted the Andalusian Government to proceed to remove the batch, which entered through Algeciras.
Neither the Ministry of Social Rights, nor the Ministry of Health, nor the Board are aware at this time that there is anyone affected by this case.
“These types of alerts are common and are intended for the food authorities of each country,” says Miguel Ángel Lurueña, doctor in Food Science and Technology.
In fact, in just the first six days of March, 84 alerts of this type have been issued - and that, taking into account that on days 2 and 3 none were sent as it was a weekend - for foods with dangerous levels of pesticides. , salmonella or parasites, or for containing plastics.
“States carry out controls and remove contaminated products.
If they consider that the food has reached the consumer, they issue an alert to consumers.”
That has not happened in this case.
José Juan Rodríguez, professor of Food Safety at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and member of the Spanish Society of Food Safety (Sesal), agrees: “If there is hepatitis A, it means that the strawberries have been in direct contact with fecal matter, or due to bad manipulation by people carrying the disease.
The food control system works, because Foreign Health has done the analysis at the border and has found the pathogen.
The problem has been magnified because we have a conflict with the Spanish countryside over the import of products from Morocco.”
In the midst of the conflict between farmers and ranchers—who are protesting, among other things, against the importation of cheaper products with fewer controls—the case has served to stir up a certain food nationalism.
According to Europa Press, the PP delegation in the European Parliament is working on drafting a parliamentary question to the European Commission in this regard, while Ciudadanos will ask for more controls linked to the Tangier Med port. At the same time, the far-right MEP Jorge Buxadé has demanded to the European Commission the “absolute, immediate and complete prohibition of the import of strawberries from Morocco.”
The Commission responded this Wednesday that the berries have not reached consumers and has specified that "rapid actions" against these goods beyond Spanish territory are not necessary.
The president of the Junta de Andalucía, Juan Manuel Moreno, has gone further and has blamed the Government even though it has detected the pathogen before reaching consumers: “Customs controls failed, those strawberries should not have entered Spain , and we ask the Government to examine the protocols and avoid these situations, which occur when products from third countries arrive in our country.
“You have to act and control what comes in.”
The Ministries of Agriculture, Social Rights and Health point out that the controls work and allow these types of problems to be detected to avoid affected people.
Irrigation with sewage
The situation has been worsening since this Tuesday, when the Valencian Farmers Association (AVA-Asaja) demanded “urgent measures” from the central government against what it considered “a danger to public health and that may have appeared in the food due to irrigation.” farms with sewage.”
The organization has sent a letter to the Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, to request that he “urgently request explanations from the Government of Morocco and specify what measures he intends to take to prevent this type of situation from occurring again.”
In any case, these situations not only occur with what is imported, but also with what is exported.
"It must be clear that controls in the EU are higher than in other countries, but food safety failures also occur here: for example, in recent weeks an alert was launched for hepatitis A in Spanish mussels that arrived in Italy ”Lurueña remembers.
According to a count by Professor of Nutrition Jose Miguel Soriano, in the last four years there have been nine notifications in the EU warning of the presence of the hepatitis A pathogen in food.
For example, in 2023 it was detected in live mussels from Italy and in frozen cultured blueberries from Poland.
From 2020 to 2022, other notifications came for frozen fruit from Belgium;
of raspberries from Bulgaria and Poland;
of clams from Italy;
of dried tomatoes from Turkey (in 2020 and 2021), and in live mussels from Italy.
Hepatitis A is transmitted when food is consumed that has been in contact with human feces of an infected person, that is, either by irrigation with fecal water or by poor handling during transport.
Food health experts recommend washing fruits well with water and bleach to try to eliminate these types of pathogens.
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