June 1, 2012

Medical experts have cautioned that an increasing amount of Asian fish imports are found containing banned antibiotics.

Biosecurity officials this year have already stopped five Vietnamese consignments of fish, including basa fillets, catfish, tilapia and frozen fish cutlets because they contained enrofloxacin, an antibiotic banned in Australia. In 2011, three shipments of fish from Vietnam were also found to be tainted with banned antibiotics.

''The trend that we see with fish, and it's generally about antibiotics, is that they have very low levels of residues but they are there nonetheless,'' said Narelle Clegg of the federal Agriculture Department's food safety branch, according to reports.

Since 2010, 1,050 imported foods, or an average of one consignment a day, have not met Australian standards. Almost 400 foods were stopped at customs due to contamination with micro-organisms such as E. coli, 246 failed because they contained banned additives or substances, 228 contained contaminants and 138 failed chemical analyses, according to an analysis by The Age of ''failed food'' results.

Food imported from China failed the most tests at 13%, followed by food from India, Italy, Japan, South Korea and France.

Dr John Turnidge, president of the Australian Society for Microbiology, said the results on Vietnamese fish imports were ''an obvious cause of concern,'' as they can alter the bacteria in people's bodies and cause resistance to antibiotics.

Australian National University Professor of infectious diseases, Peter Collignon, chastised the federal department for its low levels of testing for dangerous chemicals -- 24 tests in six months for E. coli in Chinese imports. In the last six months of 2011, it conducted just 209 tests for fluoroquinolones (types of antibiotic) and two for chloramphenicol, which can set off a fatal disease.

Collignon said the department should be running more tests and that the failure rate of the antibiotics tests of about 4% was too high.

Fish and shellfish imports from Australia grew by 12% from the fiscal year 2007-08 to 2010-11. In particular, imports from Vietnam increased by AUD10 million (US$9.8 million) in the latest fiscal year, reaching AUD162 million (US$158,3 million).