PASIR PUTEH, Oct 27th - The Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security will carry out further inspections and investigate claims that imported 'Shine Muscat' grapes are said to contain poisonous chemicals.

Its minister Datuk Seri Mohamad Sabu said that the study will be carried out by the Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI) to confirm claims previously made by an agency in Thailand.

This step is important to ensure that the imported fruits are not contaminated with dangerous poisons and so forth.

Other KPKM agencies that will be involved are the Malaysian Quarantine and Inspection Services Department and the Department of Agriculture's Biosecurity Division.

"We will refer to the one who did the research, especially MARDI and our laboratory for research and confirmation. We will look at every single thing following this incident as our government is very careful about questions related to anything they see as poisoning and so on.

"There is no continuous monitoring yet because MAQIS is still ongoing and MARDI and other bodies are still conducting studies on the poisoning and so on," he said.

He said this to reporters after the 2024 IADA Kemasin Semerak Water User Group (KPA) Presentation Ceremony for 2024 to 48 KPA chief leaders in Tok Bali, here.

Last Thursday, the Thai Pesticides Alert Network (Thai-PAN) warned about the contamination of 'Shine Muscat' grapes, after finding that most samples contained harmful chemical residues above the maximum allowed level.

Prior to that the Thai Consumer Council (TCC) bought 24 samples of the popular grapes from different locations including two from online stores, seven samples from fruit shops and fresh markets and 15 from supermarkets.