Vietnam association makes corrections to misleading fish sauce survey
Vietnam association makes corrections to misleading fish sauce survey
A non-profit consumer association has issued an official correction after releasing results of a fish sauce quality survey that created fear amongst the public and impacted the business of traditional Vietnamese fish sauce makers.
Despite the high-profile scandal caused by its misleading survey findings, the Vietnam Standards and Consumers Association (Vinastas) has not rectified the released information until now, two months after announcing it.
In an October 17 press release, Vinastas said it had tested fish sauce samples of 88 businesses and found that nearly 85 percent of them failed to come under the national standard for arsenic content.
The association published an article on its website the following day with the headline, “Nearly 85 percent of the fish sauce samples of 88 businesses fail to meet quality standards.”
On Saturday, Vinastas announced on its website again that the story had been removed for being inaccurate.
The association also corrected its press release, saying it should have been stated clearly that the “excessive amount of arsenic, [which is highly toxic],” found in the tested fish sauce samples was in its organic form, which is non-toxic.
“Vinastas acknowledges that in the press release, the survey team has made a mistake in mentioning ‘total arsenic’ without clarifying the term,” the correction reads.
“We would like to rephrase [that line in the press release] by saying that the total arsenic consists of organic and inorganic arsenic, with only the latter being a toxic substance.”
In fact, the Vinastas survey intentionally led consumers to associate “total arsenic” with “inorganic arsenic,” panicking them and the whole industry.
Multiple news outlets were also tricked by the survey into running stories that scared local consumers who use traditionally made fish sauce rich in organic arsenic on a daily basis.
A controversial ad published by Thanh Nien (Young People) newspaper amid the scare stated that the mass-produced Chin-Su and Nam Ngu sauces were safe in terms of arsenic content.
It has been confirmed that T&A Ogilvy JVC Ltd. commissioned Vinastas to carry out this survey.
T&A Ogilvy is a venture formed in 2009, after Ogilvy & Mather, a WPP company, acquired a majority stake in Hanoi-based T&A Communications, a leading public relations agency in Vietnam.
The association said it had retaken the test on 20 out of the 88 samples, and found that none of them contain inorganic arsenic, and were thus safe for consumption.
“By this announcement, Vinastas would like to correct the information in the October 17 press release and we have pulled the October 18 article from our website,” the association said.
On November 24, Vinastas also issued a public apology for the misleading findings of its survey, saying the results had been released “in a less than careful and clear manner,” which referred to organic and inorganic as one and the same, spreading fear among consumers and fish sauce traders.
The misleading Vinastas survey resulted in a large-scale scandal involving 50 news outlets which cited its results in their reports.
These media outlets were held accountable by the Ministry of Information and Communications, with 49 of them slapped with fines ranging from VND10 million (US$446) to VND50 million ($2,232).
Thanh Nien received the heftiest fine of VND200 million ($8,929) for having deliberately published a series of articles in exchange for advertising revenue, as well as releasing the similarly misleading results of their own survey, independent of Vinastas.
