VietNamNet Bridge - In Taiwan, the false rumor that tea from Lam Dong province is infected with dioxin is being spread. A Lam Dong's senior official has asserted that the province can provide evidence disproving the wrong information.

Harvesting high-quality tea in Bao Loc District, Lam Dong Province.

The Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Lam Dong said at present 70 containers of high quality tea of Vietnam, mainly of Lam Dong’s exporters. are stuck at the port in Taiwan because since late September, seven TV channels, four newspapers and one website in Taiwan reported that Lam Dong’s tea was planted in soils contaminated with dioxin.

Le Van Minh, Director of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Lam Dong, said this information is totally false, arising from unfair competition and it had seriously affected local exporters.

Hundreds of tea exporters in Lam Dong Province in the Central Highlands, including about 30 Taiwanese firms, have been affected by the rumor that their tea trees are allegedly planted in a dioxin contaminated area. According to the Vietnam Tea Association, due to the rumors, Lam Dong’s tea exports fell by 50% in the last two months.

Ha Thuy Linh, director of Ha Linh Co. Ltd in Xuan Truong Commune, said about 11 tonnes of packaged tea worth more than VND2 billion (US$94,000) was still waiting customs clearance. "Local enterprises, including us, will face financial difficulties if the situation is prolonged. We need to pay farmers, workers and pay taxes and maintain our production," she said.

According to Minh, the root cause of false information being carried by Taiwanese media was unhealthy competition among tea enterprises. Vietnam is better placed than Taiwan to cultivate olong tea and offers more competitive prices. Officials suspect that the false information could be aimed at causing difficulties for the local tea export sector.

On November 18, Lam Dong province issued an announcement to confirm that the tea and agricultural land area in Lam Dong is not contaminated with dioxin.

The notice stated: "Pursuant to the documents of many agencies in the province of Lam Dong, we confirm that Lam Dong has never detected any dioxin contaminated areas. If the US troop sprayed dioxin in Lam Dong, this country would have set technical barriers to prevent import of Lam Dong’s agricultural produce. In fact, many agricultural products of Lam Dong have been exported to the US.”

Recently, the Taiwanese Commercial Association in Lam Dong and the Taipei Cultural - Economic Office in HCM City worked with the province and requested evidence to prove that Lam Dong tea was not planted in dioxin-contaminated soil and proposed to Lam Dong to send representatives to Taiwan to attend a press conference on November 24 on the issue.

Lam Dong has 3,000 hectares of premium oolong tea varieties and tens of thousands of hectares of other species of tea. All the tea growing areas were assessed for soil quality and environmental impact by local authorities. Many Taiwanese companies are also investing in Lam Dong tea plantations, concentrated mainly in Bao Loc, Di Linh and Da Lat.

S. Tung