NO BAN ON MALAYSIA VEGETABLES, The Brunei Times, Sunday, September 16, 2007

Bandar Seri Begawan – Pesticide levels in vegetables imported from Sarawak are within acceptable levels, according to the Agriculture Department as it denied Brunei had banned such shipments from the Malaysian state.
Hajah Normah Suria Hayati binti PJDSM Dato Seri Utama (Dr) Haji Mohd Jamil Al-Sufri, acting director of the Agriculture Department, yesterday clarified that recent Malaysian news reports of Brunei banning vegetables from Sarawak were untrue.
It was claimed in news reports that the ban was attributed to the vegetables containing a high amount of pesticide residue. “Based on the analysis from the laboratories, we did not find any excessive use of pesticides in the vegetables,” she told The Brunei Times in a telephone interview.
She said the imported vegetables from Sarawak to Brunei were “not planted, but taken from forests, such as ferns”. There is currently no significant impact on consumers and farmers because Brunei did not ban the imported vegetables from Sarawak in the first place, she said.
Malaysian authorities did not come forward and verify the details of the supposedly banned vegetables, she added. She said that Brunei previously banned vegetables from Sabah, but that ban has since been lifted.
Hajah Normah added that the Agriculture Department regularly monitors imported vegetables for their quality and for the safety of consumers.
Malaysia exported over $2 million worth of vegetables to Brunei last year. Brunei imported a total of $9.6 million worth of vegetables in 2006 alone, said Hajah Normah.
The estimated value of locally produced vegetables was $21 million, with the total consumption of vegetables last year standing at 16,098 metric tonnes, or $36.7 million, figures from the Agriculture Department indicated.
According to Bernama, Malaysia’s national news agency, the move by Brunei authorities to ban vegetables from Sarawak has affected vegetable growers over the past three months. Another Malaysian newspaper quoted Sarawak’s Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Dr George Chan Hong Nam as saying that ban one month ago has badly affected the income of farmers and tarnished the image of the Malaysian state’s agriculture sector. The Chief Minister, who is also the State Agriculture Modernisation Minister, said the state government was upset over the move and would conduct a thorough investigation whether the ban was justified. – The Brunei Times, Sunday, September 16, 2007