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DPP to propose changes to food-safety regulations

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus is expected to propose amendments today to two food safety laws that would require that the place of origin of ingredients in packaged and canned foods be stated on the labels.

Amid the scare sparked by melamine-tainted products from China, DPP legislators plan to introduce the draft amendments to the Act Governing Food Sanitation (食品衛生管理法) and the Commodity Labeling Law (商品標示法), DPP caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) said.

The sanitation act only requires that food packages specify ingredients and their quantities, while the commodity law requires that the label state the place of origin of the final product.

“You only know where the product was assembled, processed or made. But you have no idea as to where the ingredients came from,” Ker said. “We need to make sure that consumers have more information on the food they buy.”

The amendments will be introduced tomorrow in the hope that the Procedure Committee will place them on the legislature’s agenda the following day, Ker said.

Ker said that as the amendments concerned public health, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus would not block them.

Meanwhile, Huang Kun-chang (黃焜璋), a senior specialist at the Department of Health, confirmed that three children had been diagnosed with kidney stones, the first possible local victims of Chinese baby formula contaminated with the toxic chemical melamine.

Among the 1,954 people who received free health examinations at special outpatient clinics in more than 20 hospitals run by the department on Saturday, three children were found to have kidney stones, Huang said in a telephone interview.

The three children, between the age of two and five, drank Chinese-made baby formula contaminated with melamine for more than a year, he said, adding it was highly likely the illnesses were caused by the tainted formula.

He said that the mother of one of the children — a two-year-old girl — was the Chinese spouse of a Taiwanese man and that she had fed the child with milk during a trip to China. The mothers of the other two sick children also lived in China, he said.

The food scare in Taiwan intensified early this month after it was found that 25 tonnes of contaminated milk powder had been imported from China.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY JIMMY CHUANG

Also See: Delegation meets Beijing counterparts
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