by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjung, Lim Kit Siang, in Petaling Jaya on Tuesday, 29th June, 1993:
MCA President, Datuk Dr. Ling Liong Sik, should publicly apologise for MCA causing the nation-wide alarm over of sale of fishballs containing pork and compensate the losses suffered by the hundreds of fish-ball factories and retail outlets
The Minister for Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs, Datuk Abu Hassan Omar, yesterday announced that reports that fishball manufacturers had mixed pork in their fishball and fiskcakes are baseless and untrue, and that all the 381 fishball samples taken from factories and retail outlets in the Klang Valley are free from pork.
He added that samples from 30 factories and 569 retail outlets nationwide had been sent to the Veterinary Department and the Chemistry Department for analysis as a result of the nation-wide campaign by the enforcement division of his Ministry following an allegation by a MCA Youth leader in the Klang Vally that many irresponsible fishball manufacturers had mixed pork in their products due to the high price of fish.
Datuk Abu Hassan said that fishball manufacturers and retail outlets could take legal action to sue for losses they had suffered against those who had spread baseless rumours about their mixing pork in the fishball – but this is clearly not going to be a satisfactory solution.
The entire fishball manufacture and business was in utter chaos in the past week, causing a tremendous drop in their sale, as a result of the most irresponsible statement by a MVA Youth leader, who did not talk about a specific fishball manufacturer mixing pork in the fishball, but ‘many manufacturers’ as having mixed pork in their fishball.
As MCA is the cause of the nation-wide alarm and the inconvenience and losses suffered by the fish-ball manufacturers and retailers when there was a tremendous drop in the sale of fishballs throughout the country, the MCA President, Datuk Dr. Ling Liong Sik, should publicly apologise on behalf of the MCA for the nation-wide alarm over the sale of fishballs containing pork, as this is a very sensitive issue in a multi-religious society like Malaysia, and compensate the losses suffered by the hundreds of fish-ball manufacturers and retail outlets in the whole country.
Furthermore, MCA should take disciplinary action against the MCA and MCA Youth leaders who had been so irresponsible as to spread such baseless and vicious lies about fishball manufacture in utter disregard of the sensitivity of the issue in Malaysia, just to get cheap publicity in the newspapers.