Kuai Kuai Co Ltd (乖乖食品) yesterday pulled its Peacock Biscuits (孔雀餅乾) from store shelves after it was told by the Taipei City health department that traces of melamine were found in the products.
Chiang Yu-mei (姜郁美), director of the Taipei health department’s food and drug division, said the results of the latest round of random tests came in yesterday, and that officials found one pack of Peacock Biscuits that contained 4.62 parts per million (ppm) of melamine.
All of the other 86 products in the random test — including other products by Kuai Kuai and Nabisco’s Oreo cookies — tested negative and were therefore not recalled, she said.
Chiang said the department has demanded that the company recall the crackers and destroy them under the supervision of the department.
Chiang said the company used powdered baking ammonia from Sesoda Corp, which had imported tainted ammonia from China. The powdered baking ammonia imported by Sesoda Corp was found to contain between 70ppm and 300ppm of melamine by the Department of Health (DOH) earlier this month.
Kuai Kuai assistant manager Ker Chih-hsiung (柯志雄) told a separate press conference yesterday that the company would follow the city government’s instructions and pull all the biscuits off the shelves.
Consumers who had purchased Peacock Biscuits could ask for refunds at stores, Ker said.
Ker also said that the company would return the product to store shelves when its safety has been assured.
The Bureau of Food Safety yesterday urged the public not to panic, saying that although the crackers used ammonium bicarbonate imported from China, the powder comprised less than 1 percent of their total volume.
The DOH said that it would continue to sample snack foods on the market to make sure that other products do not contain the problematic ammonium bicarbonate.
In the past weeks, melamine has been found in imports of dairy products, creamers and vegetable-based proteins from China.
The DOH does not allow foods that test positive for melamine using the LC-MS/MS technique (liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry) to remain on the market.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
Also See: Six more arrested in Chinese milk probe
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique