Traditionally, food safety issues associated with alcoholic beverages focus on chemical or physical hazards from the processing line. Intoxication with alcoholic beverages, as it relates to food safety, is less reported in the literature. However, there occasionally arise incidents where the adulteration of an alcoholic product leads to severe illness or death upon consumption or intoxication. The addition of cheap methanol to illicitly produced liquor—a rising issue in Asia—is increasingly being studied as a food safety and food adulteration issue.
In this case study, seven people were hospitalized with alcohol poisoning from October to November 2020. Two victims suffered from methanol poisoning, one person died, and four others suffered eye and brain damage. All of the cases stemmed from consumption of the same commercial liquor produced by a local company in Vietnam.