I just sent an email to National Environment Agency (NEA) on a potential contamination of fresh sugar cane juice.
Dear Sir/Mdm,
I received an email circulated among my friends on potential contamination of fresh sugar cane juice and I wonder its authenticity. With the recent heightened concern over food hygiene, I hope the relevant authorities can address this matter and confirm if there's any potential contamination of fresh sugar cane juice.
Please read on the below.
*Avoid Drinking Fresh Sugar Cane Juice*
Please take 2 mins to read this.
This email was sent by a friend whose father is working with the Ministry of the Environment in S'pore.*
Health News - About Sugar Cane Drinks*
A friend whose father works for the government health inspection passed on his info. Their job is to inspect all hawkers, their cooked food, their store hygiene, etc. They found sugar cane juice hasthe highest content of bacteria among all food.. In fact, it has exceeded the set limit.
Hence, these guys had to find out why. They went round all sugar cane stores and watched the way the hawkers handled their sugar cane, wash their glasses, their entire procedure. But they couldn't find the problem.
One day, they stayed till closing time and discovered some shocking facts! Whenever, the hawkers closed their stores, they wouldwash the floor with detergent.. As we know, the remaining sugar canes will be placed at the back of the store, vertically standing and as sugar canes are very porous, they tend to absorb whatever liquid around them. Besides the soapy water, the dirt on hawkers'boots, cats' urine, etc, will all be absorbed?? Now, whenever I eat at a hawker centre, I would warn all my friends about this and of course I stopped drinking my favorite sugar cane juice.
A friend, who loved sugar cane juice, was pregnant. She was always drinking sugar cane juice. Anyway, one day she miscarried and the fetus was already like 6 or 7 months old, I think. When the doctors did an autopsy to find out why all of a sudden the fetus had died inside her, they found traces of some chemical substance, which was found in cat urine. Large traces of it.
While it would not be able to harm adults, it was extremely toxic to babies, what more a fetus? So they tried to determine how this cat urine thing could have ended up in the fetus.. This meant that it had to be digested by the mother, right? And the only logical conclusion they could come up with was that since these sugar cane juice stall holders just leave the canes lying around on the wet and dirty floor, it would not be impossible to think that stray cats could have peed on those sugar canes or near those sugar canes. So think carefully the next time you order that favorite sugar cane juice!
Please pass this on to everyone you know in S'pore & M'sia.. Let's take action to make this world a better & safer place for all of us & the generations to come..
Hope to hear from you soon.
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Regards
Loh Hon Chun (MR)
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