By Gordon French
Caribbean Net News Guyana Correspondent
Email: gordon@caribbeannetnews.com

GEORGETOWN, Guyana: Following days of uncertainty and in the midst of a court battle, the Myra, which had been moored mid-stream in Guyana since March 10, set sail for France late Thursday carrying onboard some 900 tonnes of soybean believed to be contaminated with salmonella typhimurium.

The Bahamian-registered ship'Myra'moored midstream of the Demerara River

The Bahamian-registered vessel was never allowed to deliver the consignment, as Guyanese authorities said that France had ordered the vessel returned so that the soybean could be destroyed. They had also ordered that the hatch containing the soybean remain sealed, since the bacteria was considered even more potent in the tropics.

The decision to return to France was sparked by a request from the captain of the vessel, who said that he had been moored in Guyana for far too long, and that each day represented a loss to the owners.

The importer, a local poultry producer, secured three court orders which stated that the soybean shipment must offload in Guyana.

However, on Wednesday, attorney general, Doodnauth Singh acting on behalf of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA), moved to the Appeal Court as part of a necessary process to protect the CARICOM nation from any adverse effects of releasing the shipment, even for testing. The importer told reporters on Tuesday night, that the French had released further documents which suggested that tests were done on some 111 samples and they all proved negative.

But, the GRA said that it detected a forgery among the documents submitted by the importer, and as a consequence it feared that any subsequent reports may also be forged. The forgery was said to be a shipping invoice or a certificate of origin purporting to show that the shipment originated in a CARICOM country, to wit, Trinidad and Tobago.