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Iran Deputy Minister Comments on Food Additives, Bird Flu Drug

Posted on: Thursday, 20 October 2005, 09:00 CDT

Excerpt from report by Iranian newspaper Aftab-e Yazd website on 19 October

The deputy-minister of health, and medical treatment and education in charge of food and drugs has said: "New regulations for the import of food additives will be announced within the next three weeks and no later." Rasul Dinarvand told ISNA that the health ministry is not preventing food additive imports, but that "unfortunately at present, we face a very wide range of food additives that are imported illegally, and some are fakes." He said there is a "disorderly market" of food additives in the country, and "tests carried out on these additives have shown that many of the substances cited on the additives do not exist, or the quantity is less than is mentioned." He said the health ministry would definitely end this disorderly market, and "new regulations for the importation of food additives will be announced within the next three weeks and no later, and we shall end this disorder, the abuse of profiteers and contraband." [Passage omitted: Dinarvand comments on the ministry's efforts to ensure pharmacies/drugstores are run by trained pharmacists].

The deputy health minister said the ministry is "preparing certain drugs that may be used if the bird flu virus spreads to humans." He told Fars news agency: "The health ministry has made preparations to fight the disease, in provinces where bird flu, a disease shared by humans, may arise." The "necessary drug has been prepared, and if the disease is found in humans, there will be a firm response." The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, and the World Health Organization have provided good information on bird flu worldwide. But the concern is over wild birds, which are the subtype N5, and vectors of the deadly N5N1, or bird flu." Dinarvand said that with "the migration of wild birds to Iran from countries where the bird flu virus exists, the Veterinary Organization must oversee those birds."

Source: BBC Monitoring Middle East

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