SINGAPORE – A woman who had bought some prawns from a Sengkang wet market last week made a strange discovery.
When the 40-year-old, who wanted to be known only was Madam Huang, was cleaning the 25 prawns that she bought from a stall at Rivervale Plaze, she found translucent blobs.
The Singapore permanent resident, who moved here from Guangdong, China, felt something was amiss when the blobs turned into a solid white “rubber-like substance” when placed in boiling water.
She had recently read online about seafood suppliers from Vietnam who inject prawns with gelatin-like chemicals to boost their weight so that they can fetch a higher selling price.
“In my home town, it is common for suppliers to illegally inject substances into prawns and sotongs. That is why I noticed the blobs,” she said.
The Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) is investigating the matter and “looking into whether the sale weight of the crustaceans were artificially increased by injecting gelatin in them”, said the report.
An AVA spokesman said: “As part of AVA’s food safety programme, imported prawns and shrimp (fresh or frozen) are monitored and sampled for food safety and compliance with our standards and requirements.”
Sampling tests cover a wide range of chemical contaminants and microbiological hazards, including pesticide residues, drug residues such as antibiotics and hormones, and microbial hazards such as salmonella.
“Food products that fail our inspections and tests will not be allowed for sale and enforcement action will be taken,” the spokesman added.
The stallholder who sold Madam Huang the prawns told Chinese evening daily Lianhe Wanbao that he had bought the prawns from wholesalers, adding that he had never encountered this before in his 10 years of running his business.
Prawns in Singapore are sourced from countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam.
maryanns@sph.com.sg
