Over 100 bottles of Dr Thanh found with dregs in southern Vietnam
Over 100 bottles of Dr Thanh found with dregs in southern Vietnam
More than 100 unopened bottles of an herbal tea brand, manufactured by a beverage maker that has recently won a lawsuit in a fly-in-bottle dispute, have been found containing strange floating substances inside, a food safety agency in southern Vietnam said.
All of the Dr Thanh bottles, which officers seized from different distributors and stores in Ca Mau Province, have been sealed off for further investigation, Tran Be Ngoan, head of the provincial food safety watchdog, confirmed on Friday.
The products are all within their expiry date, but some white sediments can easily be seen floating at the bottom of the bottles, according to officers.
“These Dr Thanh products show sign of poor quality and we have asked relevant agencies to inspect and handle the case,” Be added.
On Tuesday, a local resident found a Dr Thanh bottle with strange dregs at a café and immediately reported to authorities.
Food safety officers later seized seven contaminated bottles at the café, and went on to discover another 72 such bottles at a nearby store.
On Wednesday, food safety officers continued inspecting the stock of Viet Loan, a beverage distributor, and found 147 24-bottle cardboard boxes of unsold Dr Thanh herbal tea.
Of these, two boxes were found containing similar dregs as the previously seized bottles.
Dr Thanh, as well as such products as Number 1 energy drink and Zero Degree green tea, is produced by Tan Hiep Phat Group, headquartered in the southern province of Binh Duong.
A consumer in the southern province of Tien Giang was Friday condemned to seven years behind bars by a local court for extorting money from Tan Hiep Phat after discovering an unopened Number 1 bottle that had a fly inside.
Vo Van Minh had demanded VND1 billion ($46,600), and later halved it to VND500 million, in return for his silence.
Minh was about to receive the cash from a company representative on January 27 when police officers, notified by Tan Hiep Phat of what it considered ‘Minh’s blackmail, showed up to capture him.
Tan Hiep Phat renamed itself Number 1 Group in September, following the dispute with Minh, which has severely tainted its reputation given dense media coverage.
Members of the public have grouped themselves into two camps, for and against the firm.
The first group, seemingly outnumbering the second, has maintained that Tan Hiep Phat was right to have police officers arrest Minh, whereas the other has insisted it was unethical for the firm to treat its customer that way.
A huge wave of people have taken to the Internet to urge one another to ‘boycott’ products made by Tan Hiep Phat, which has led to the company admitting to suffering whopping damage worth at least VND2 trillion ($89.29 million).
