The Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) has given catfish imported from Vietnam a clean bill of health following rumours that stocks were contaminated with toxic chemicals, The Straits Times reported.

Concerns over farmed catfish from Vietnam were raised in January when an e-mail circulating on the Internet claimed that they were laced with poisons because they were farmed in the heavily polluted Mekong River and have been injected with hormones made from urine. The catfish is known as pangas or sutchi and are usually sold under these names.

The AVA has received about 100 calls from concerned consumers since the email first surfaced, the newspaper said. Most were from anxious parents who had fed the fish to their children.

Tests conducted revealed that the fish was clean. 'It is not true that Vietnamese catfish available on the international market contains high levels of poisons and bacteria,' AVA spokesman Goh Shih Yong told The Straits Times.