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
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official yesterday said that a delegation that visited China for an APEC meeting did not receive any kind of treatment that downgraded Taiwan’s sovereignty. Department of International Organizations Director-General Jonathan Sun (孫儉元) said that he and a group of ministry officials visited Shenzhen, China, to attend the APEC Informal Senior Officials’ Meeting last month. The trip went “smoothly and safely” for all Taiwanese delegates, as the Chinese side arranged the trip in accordance with long-standing practices, Sun said at the ministry’s weekly briefing. The Taiwanese group did not encounter any political suppression, he said. Sun made the remarks when
The Taiwanese passport ranked 33rd in a global listing of passports by convenience this month, rising three places from last month’s ranking, but matching its position in January last year. The Henley Passport Index, an international ranking of passports by the number of designations its holder can travel to without a visa, showed that the Taiwan passport enables holders to travel to 139 countries and territories without a visa. Singapore’s passport was ranked the most powerful with visa-free access to 192 destinations out of 227, according to the index published on Tuesday by UK-based migration investment consultancy firm Henley and Partners. Japan’s and
BROAD AGREEMENT: The two are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff to 15% and a commitment for TSMC to build five more fabs, a ‘New York Times’ report said Taiwan and the US have reached a broad consensus on a trade deal, the Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations said yesterday, after a report said that Washington is set to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent. The New York Times on Monday reported that the two nations are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent and commit Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to building at least five more facilities in the US. “The agreement, which has been under negotiation for months, is being legally scrubbed and could be announced this month,” the paper said,
MIXED SOURCING: While Taiwan is expanding domestic production, it also sources munitions overseas, as some, like M855 rounds, are cheaper than locally made ones Taiwan and the US plan to jointly produce 155mm artillery shells, as the munition is in high demand due to the Ukraine-Russia war and should be useful in Taiwan’s self-defense, Armaments Bureau Director-General Lieutenant General Lin Wen-hsiang (林文祥) told lawmakers in Taipei yesterday. Lin was responding to questions about Taiwan’s partnership with allies in producing munitions at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee. Given the intense demand for 155mm artillery shells in Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion, and in light of Taiwan’s own defensive needs, Taipei and Washington plan to jointly produce 155mm shells, said Lin,
RSS