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In all the major Chinese cities, salmon has disappeared from supermarket and grocery store shelves, and the country’s top experts warn people not to eat sea fish famous for omega-3 fatty acids, reports Bloomberg.
The boycott began after the president of the large fruit and vegetable market in Sinfadi, which identified nearly 100 new cases of COVID-19, said the origins of the new outbreak date back to the merchant’s imported salmon cutting board.
Zeng Guang, a senior expert at the National Health Commission, said in an interview with state media Sunday that “it remains unclear whether humans transmitted the virus to salmon or whether they themselves became infected with the coronavirus.” He warned the people of Beijing not to eat raw salmon or buy imported seafood just yet.
Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the country’s Center for Disease Prevention and Control, said on Sunday that the virus could survive in frozen food for up to three months and that the agency “has a strong suspicion” that the source of the latest outbreak is contaminated food.
While it is unclear whether the coronavirus can be transmitted through frozen food, which is then thawed, the rapid abandonment of salmon reflects China’s fears of a sudden resurgence of COVID-19 in Beijing, the country’s capital, political center and cultural with 20 million. population. Some 20 neighborhoods in the city have been isolated and some schools have closed. Local officials are in a hurry to find people who have visited the Sinfadi market or have contacted people who have visited it.
Keith Neal, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Nottingham in the UK, says any contact with salmon is likely to be the result of cross-contamination, Reuters reports.
“Markets can be very tight, a lot of people, so like Wuhan, it has contributed to the spread,” says the city’s professor, who considers himself the source of the virus.
According to Neal, he was not at all surprised by the connection to Europe in this case, which can be explained by the spread of the virus around the world.
“This virus spread from China, there was always a possibility that the world would take it and return it to China.” The fact that the strain of the virus found in Europe means something very simple: people return to China after traveling through Europe, “says the academic.
The Norwegian Food Safety Authority states that it has no evidence of infected fish.
Espen Nakstad of the Norwegian Health Directorate does not believe the virus has entered China through salmon.
“It is hard to imagine how salmon could have brought the virus to China,” he told NRK.
The salmon boycott is another blow to seafood-exporting countries in China, with sales falling more than 30% in the first four months of this year as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. According to Chinese customs, before the crisis, the four largest exporters – Chile, Norway, Australia and the Danish Faroe Islands – welcomed growing demand, which totaled 686 million last year. AMERICAN DOLLAR.
The increase in demand was driven by middle-class people who began to earn more and by people’s interest in a healthier diet.
Pork producers’ shares rose on Monday as a result of a change in attitudes towards salmon: Jiangxi Zhengbang Technology Co. rose 6.9 percent on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange after a mid-day break, while Wens Foodstuffs Group Co. rose 3.8 percent. Both meat-processing companies posted the highest growth in their share prices since April.
Stocks are likely to have risen due to expectations that consumer demand for seafood will increase demand for seafood, said Shanghai Chen, an analyst at Shanghai-based KGI Securities.
A study published in April by researchers from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations found that coronavirus is not known to affect or infect food-producing aquatic animals.
The risk “must be negligible”, with adequate “food preparation and sanitation”. On the other hand, scientists wrote that the surface of seafood can become infected with the virus if they come into contact with sick people, including Melba G. Bondad-Reantaso.
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