Over the past few days, a long list of foods and farm produce has emerged that carried Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) certification or were marked as complying with the Certified Agricultural Standards (CAS), but were subsequently found to be in breach of food safety regulations.
Furthermore, these tainted products have seriously affected public health in Taiwan, while the revelations have badly damaged the international reputation of foodstuffs that were made or produced in Taiwan.
Agricultural departments have proposed control at the source as a means of preventing the damage from spreading further, telling CAS-certified producers to regulate themselves.
This demand is right in theory, but CAS regulations are only applied at the factory production stage, during which random samples are tested.
Since CAS certification does not start from the source, the latest initiative will fail to guarantee product safety.
Agricultural departments’ demand that producers regulate themselves is nothing but empty talk because it means that officials have abandoned their posts on the front line of food safety.
Regulations state that products carrying the CAS label must be made mainly from Taiwanese ingredients, but in practice that is not the case at all.
A large proportion of raw materials come from developing countries, including meat products such as chicken legs and beef, fruit and vegetables like white radishes and pineapples, as well as wheat flour, milk powder and many aquatic products.
Among agricultural products that are currently imported, many come from developing economies such as China, Thailand and Vietnam. Compared with 2009, farm product imports from China, Thailand and Vietnam grew by 20.4 percent, 22.5 percent and 39.8 percent respectively.
Taiwan’s markets are full of farm produce from developing countries and processed foods whose ingredients also come from developing countries, but consumers are mostly unaware of this.
While authorities have been rigorously inspecting Taiwanese farm products and processed foods, they should not overlook imported products whose safety might be even more in doubt.
There are plenty of laws and regulations about place-of-origin labeling, including the Act Governing Food Sanitation (食品衛生管理法), the Department of Health’s Labeling Regulations for Bulk Foodstuffs (散裝食品標示相關規定), the Agricultural Production and Certification Act (農產品生產及驗證管理法), the Food Management Act (糧食管理法), the Commodity Labeling Act (商品標示法), the Customs Act (關稅法), the Regulations Governing the Determination of Country of Origin of an Import Good (進口貨物原產地認定標準) and the Regulations Governing Certificates of Origin and Certificates of Processing (原產地證明書及加工證明書管理辦法).
However, it matters little how many laws there may be, because they are not much use if they are not enforced.
On Friday the legislature passed amendments to articles 31 and 34 of the Act Governing Food Sanitation, imposing higher fines and prison sentences on people who manufacture, process and sell food products that are toxic and harmful to human health.
That is all very well, but if control does not reach back to the source, which means blocking substandard foreign products from entering our borders, as well as strictly enforcing relevant laws and regulations, then all talk of ensuring food safety is just a lot of hot air.
Wu Ming-ming is an executive committee member of Taiwan Thinktank.
TRANSLATED BY JULIAN CLEGG
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