Curb on NZ milk products goes as health scare evaporates

The government has withdrawn the restriction on entry of powder milk imported from New Zealand into the country, as it has been found that none of the consignments had contained any toxic ingredient as feared.
The ministry of commerce (MoC) has issued an order to the customs authority lifting the earlier restriction that no powder milk imported from New Zealand would be released without a certain category of test.
Following the order, the customs authority has started releasing consignments of powder milk without the test that was earlier made mandatory to detect presence of any Clostridium Botulinum that is linked to botulism.
Botulism is an infection caused by bacteria and it can lead to paralysis and even death.        .
About 600 tonnes of the Fonterra brand of powdered milk had been remaining stuck-up at the Chittagong Port for customs clearance, as the company itself on August 2 reported contamination of its products.
Talking to the FE Saturday,
Commerce Secretary Mahabub Ahmed said the MoC withdrew the restriction that required the customs authority to do the test.
"The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has informed us that it did not find presence of any toxic element in consignments from Singapore that had been tested so far," he added.
Based on findings of the NBR, the MoC decided to allow entry of the milk products from New Zealand into Bangladesh, he added.
Chittagong Customs House (CCH) Commissioner Masud Sadik said the customs authority was no more conducting any such test as per the MoC instruction issued last week.
"We have released all of the consignments of powdered milk from New Zealand," he added.
About nine consignments were examined in Singapore as the laboratory of that country had the capacity to conduct such tests, he added.
The test was quite expensive and as a result the import costs increased, he added.
"The New Zealand government assured us that their powdered milk was safe for human consumption," Mr Sadik added.
In a joint test carried out by New Zealand and the United States (US), it was found that it was the Whey Protein Concentrate (WPC), not any 'clostridium botulinum' linked to botulism, in the milk powder manufactured by Fonterra.
The world's biggest dairy product exporter was caught up in a contamination scare in August last, when in some of its products it found what was mistaken for a particular bacterium that could cause botulism.
It triggered panic among the people, as they feared that the life-threatening bacterium might exist in the Fonterra milk. It led to imposition of the restriction on Fonterra products in Bangladesh.            
The exporter had to withdraw 42 tonnes of milk powder bound for China because of the high nitrite levels.