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Coronavirus: US agencies dismiss China’s theory of Covid-19 spread via food and packaging
- Chinese authorities have linked several infections among food workers to contaminated frozen salmon, cod, and pig heads
- But scientists around the world and the USFDA are among bodies to say there is no credible evidence Covid-19 can be transmitted this way
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United States agencies in charge of food safety have taken aim at a controversial theory backed by Chinese health officials, with a new statement saying there is no evidence Covid-19 can spread via food and food packaging.
“After more than a year since the [Covid-19] outbreak was declared a global health emergency, [we] continue to underscore that there is no credible evidence of food or food packaging associated with or as a likely source of viral transmission,” the heads of the US Food and Drug Administration and Department of Agriculture said in a joint statement on Thursday.
Few countries have been concerned about this potential kind of transmission, as Covid-19 is known to principally spread via droplets in the air when people are in close contact. But in China, where local disease spread is limited, it has become central to disease control measures.
Millions of packages of imported frozen foods have been disinfected on entry into China and hundreds of thousands of samples tested for traces of the Covid-19 virus. Foreign food companies who have run afoul of requirements faced bans.
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Chinese health authorities said they linked several infections among food workers in the country to contaminated frozen salmon, cod, and pig heads, citing positive swabs and no clear alternative source of infection. They have also raced to track down goods they say test positive, with Saudi shrimp, Chilean cherries and ice cream made with Ukrainian milk powder among goods highlighted in local news.
But scientists around the world say there is no clear proof that the infections in China were caused by handling these products. They say while theoretically possible, the risk of a food worker getting sick from touching a package that had been coughed or sneezed on by a sick person in another country, would be incredibly low.
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The US joint statement hit that point again.
“Considering the more than 100 million cases of Covid-19, we have not seen epidemiological evidence of food or food packaging as the source of Sars-CoV-2 transmission to humans,” said acting USDA secretary Kevin Shea and acting FDA commissioner Janet Woodcock.
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