RIGA - Lithuania's Veterinary and Food Service recently found that a juice made by Latvia's Cido Partikas Grupa (Cido Food Group) failed quality tests and might have to be withdrawn from store shelves, sparking an angry response from company officials.
The food inspectors announced that Cido's grapefruit juice found "nicotoxin resulting from mold fungi" in the company's grapefruit juice, according to the Latvian Food and Veterinary Service.
Ernests Zavackis, director of the service's food control department, told the Baltic News Service that the findings by his Lithuanian colleagues were not addressed directly to Cido, since it was the imported juice concentrate that failed to meet quality requirements.
Zavackis said one explanation could be that the concentrate had been made of spoiled grapefruit.
He added that people should not worry because health risks were only possible if the juice was consumed in large quantities.
Arrangements were being made to withdraw the product from retailers' shelves, but Zavackis said there should not be much juice left in stores as its expiration date was only three weeks away.
He stressed that the Latvian food authority would pay closer attention to the quality of juice concentrates in the future.
Meanwhile, Cido officials ordered tests on their grapefruit juice and announced that the level of patulin, a carcinogenic mycotoxin that can cause a range of health problems, in the juice did not exceed the acceptable norm. Marketing director Dmitrijs Tairovs said that the juice was tested in the chemical laboratory of the Latvian Public Health Agency, and that the company had ordered several independent tests from other laboratories, including one in Germany and the Latvian Food and Veterinary Service.
"We tested both juices produced on July 27, 2004 in which Lithuanians found high levels of patulin, as well as juices produced this year. For now, nothing has been found," he said.
He pointed out that tests carried out in Lithuania found 210 milligrams of patulin per one kilogram of Cido juice, while the acceptable level is up to 50 milligrams of patulin per kilogram. The Latvian tests found only 10 milligrams of patulin per one kilogram of grapefruit juice.
Tairovs also noted that patulin contamination is usually found in apple juices and not in citrus juices. "The Lithuanian tests seem suspicious," he said.
Cido's managing director, Vadims Vlasovs, opined that Lithuanian juice producers are struggling with the competition, as the Latvian company's share on the local juice market has reached 12 percent. Cido's share is second after Elmenhorster, a Lithuanian company, while the third largest market share belongs to Latvia's Gutta.
Vlasovs said Cido exports some 30 percent of its products to Lithuania, accounting for approximately the same proportion of the company's sales. "Currently, we are working with the laboratory tests to prove the harmlessness of our juices and only after that we will think about losses brought about by the situation," he said.
