Jakarta. US-based retail giant Walmart has expressed its readiness to collaborate with the Indonesian government to help restore the reputation of Indonesian products affected by the recent Cesium-137 radioactive contamination involving shrimp and clove exports, an Indonesian official said.

Chairman of the Communication and Diplomacy Division of the Cesium-137 Task Force, Bara Krishna Hasibuan, said Walmart supports the government’s efforts to regain international market confidence in Indonesian goods.

“Walmart has stated its willingness to work with the Indonesian government in efforts to recover both market access and the reputation of our national products,” Bara said on Wednesday.

Bara added that Walmart is one of the major retailers selling Indonesian shrimp and spice products in the US market. Despite the ongoing issue, the company reaffirmed that food safety remains its top priority in trade activities.

The Indonesian government has also opened communication with two leading US trade associations, the National Fisheries Institute (NFI), which represents seafood distributors, and the American Spice Trade Association (ASTA), which oversees spice traders.

“We have reached an agreement to cooperate and carry out positive campaigns across the US public,” Bara said.

To ensure Indonesian products are free from radioactive contamination, Bara added that the US Department of Energy has offered technical cooperation to assist in handling the contamination case. “They have offered technical assistance to Indonesia to address this issue,” he said.

The offer followed the Task Force’s presentation of the government’s mitigation measures in response to radioactive contamination found in export products.

Meanwhile, the Industry Ministry confirmed that 22 production facilities within the Modern Cikande Industrial Estate (MCIE) in Serang, Banten, have completed their decontamination process from Cesium-137. Seven other sites outside the industrial estate remain under cleanup, conducted by the Task Force in coordination with the Nuclear Energy Regulatory Agency (Bapeten) and other related institutions.

Prior to the United States Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) issuing Import Alert 99-51 against Indonesian shrimp products over Cesium-137 traces, Dutch customs authorities had also reported radionuclide contamination in Indonesian-made sneakers.

The finding was confirmed by the Netherlands’ Autoriteit Nucleaire Veiligheid en Stralingsbescherming (ANVS), which detected several boxes of sneakers with radiation levels reaching 110 nanoSieverts per hour (nSv/h), far above the 20 nSv/h background radiation level, caused by Cesium-137 contamination.

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