In yet another food industry ban related to toxic chemicals from China, the Department of Health (DOH) said yesterday that an imported batch of powdered baking ammonia was found to contain between 70 parts per million (ppm) and 300ppm of melamine.
The department subsequently banned imports of baking ammonia from China, and has passed this information on to the WHO’s International Food Safety Authorities Network.
The tainted ammonium bicarbonate was produced by two companies in China, Huaer Chemical Co (化二化工有限公司) and Yaolong (耀隆化工集團), the DOH said.
The only company in Taiwan to have imported tainted materials from these companies is Sesoda Corporation (東碱股份有限公司), Deputy DOH Minister Cheng Shou-hsia (鄭守夏) said at a press conference yesterday.
While the DOH said that the melamine content was 70ppm to 300ppm, the Taipei City Government Department of Health issued a press release saying the concentration was between 1,410ppm and 2,470 ppm.
The DOH did not give an explanation for the discrepancy.
Ammonium bicarbonate, also known as baking ammonia, is listed as a legal food additive in the Standard Regulating Scope and Application of Food Additives (食品添加物使用範圍及限量標準), Cheng said.
“Although it is allowed as an additive in food products, adding harmful substances to it is prohibited,” he said.
Ammonium bicarbonate is used in the food industry as a leavening agent. It is commonly used in biscuits, cookies, cream puffs and Chinese fried bread sticks (油條).
The DOH said it had notified local health bureaus to track down tainted baking ammonia nationwide.
Sesoda said in a press release issued yesterday that, of the 400 tonnes of ammonium bicarbonate it had imported from China, 20 tonnes remained in its warehouses countrywide, leaving 380 tonnes in circulation.
However, the company said it did not know whether all 380 tonnes are contaminated.
Sesoda is a listed company headquartered in Taipei and has warehouses countrywide. According to the company’s Web site, it is the largest manufacturer of sulphate of potash in Taiwan.
The DOH yesterday called on all businesses in Taiwan to stop using Chinese-made powdered baking ammonia in food products and to use other raising agents such as baking soda, yeast or yeast powder instead.
“[Powdered baking ammonia] is used in a wide variety of food products, but in very small amounts,” Wu Ming-chang (吳明昌), a professor of food science at the National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, told the Taipei Times in a telephone interview.
Wu said a leavening agent is added to dough or batter before heating or baking.
While the chemical reactions involved in the baking process may emit some chemicals in the form of gas, melamine will remain in the finished product, Wu said.
Melamine has been added to milk powder by some companies in China to give their products a false high protein content reading.
Wu said the addition of melamine to powdered baking ammonia also caused testing instruments to falsely identify a high amount of nitrogen, which is used as an indicator of the purity of the material.
A source speaking on condition of anonymity said that health authorities had already detected melamine in ammonium bicarbonate a week ago, but waited until yesterday to make the announcement.
The source said that talk of melamine-contaminated baking ingredients had been circulating in the food industry for the past week.
In response, a DOH official who declined to be identified said that since the incident involving King Car Industrial Co (金車) last month, health authorities have been randomly checking certain materials for traces of melamine.
When they found that ammonium bicarbonate sold by local suppliers contained melamine, they traced the contamination back to Sesoda, the official said.
On Sept. 21, King Car recalled 120,000 cases of three-in-one instant coffee and instant soup products after it discovered the products contained a melamine-spiked non-dairy creamer produced by Zhongshi Duqing (Shandong) Biotech Co, located in Shijiazhuang in Hebei Province.
The DOH called an inter-agency meeting yesterday afternoon with the Consumer Protection Commission, the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the Council of Agriculture, the Straits Exchange Foundation and other agencies to discuss measures to assist companies find substitutes for ammonium bicarbonate or importing ammonium bicarbonate from countries other than China.
Melamine-contaminated milk and baby formula has killed at least four babies and sickened thousands of children in China.
Also See: China partly to blame for milk: Wen
A signaling system malfunction disrupted high-speed rail (HSR) services beginning at 8am today, with trains temporarily reduced to three northbound and three southbound trains per hour as authorities conduct inspections. The malfunction occurred on a section of track in Miaoli County during pre-operation checks early this morning, forcing northbound and southbound trains to use a single track, the HSR operator said. The regular schedule has been replaced with three hourly trains offering only nonreserved seating in each direction, stopping at every station, it said, adding that business class cars would still have reserved seating. Departures from terminal stations are scheduled at the top
DRONE CENTRAL: Taiwan aims to become Asia’s democratic hub for drones, with most exports focused on high-quality military-grade models, an official said Taiwan’s drone industry is expected to expand significantly by 2030, producing 100,000 units per month and exporting half of them, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Current drone production capacity is about 15,000 units per month, but the industry can quickly scale up as demand increases, Industrial Development Administration Director-General Chiou Chyou-huey (邱求慧) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s drone output grew 2.5-fold last year to NT$12.9 billion (US$408.3 million) under a government program to develop the uncrewed vehicle sector, he said. The Executive Yuan in October last year approved plans to invest NT$44.2 billion into domestic production of uncrewed aerial
VERBOSE VESSELS: A CGA cutter and a China Coast Guard exchanged verbal barbs for more than a day in Taiwanese-controlled waters before the Chinese vessel left The Taiwanese and Chinese coast guards had a standoff near the strategically located Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the north of the South China Sea, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The two sides engaged in intense radio exchanges over sovereignty claims during the 33-hour standoff. China Coast Guard vessel 3501 eventually left the restricted waters, 26.6 nautical miles (49.2km) west of the Pratas Islands, at 5pm yesterday, the CGA said. Lying approximately between southern Taiwan and Hong Kong, the Taiwan-controlled Pratas are seen by some security experts as vulnerable to Chinese attack due to their distance — more than
WARNING: China should stop engaging in actions that undermine regional peace and stability, as it would only build resentment among people across the Strait, the CGA said China has deployed more than 100 navy, coast guard and other vessels in waters from the Yellow Sea to the South China Sea and the western Pacific since US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) met in Beijing, National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said yesterday. “In this part of the world, #China is the one & only PROBLEM wrecking the #StatusQuo & threatening regional peace & stability,” Wu wrote on X. In a separate post, he said Beijing was coercing Taiwan’s maritime domain, calling it illegal and provocative, after the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) expelled a
RSS