The discovery of excessive levels of the industrial chemical melamine in Chinese eggs has prompted the Hong Kong authorities to expand health tests to include meat products imported from China, a senior official said yesterday.
The move follows the announcement late on Saturday that Hong Kong testers had found 4.7 parts per million (ppm) of melamine in imported eggs produced by a division of China’s Dalian Hanwei Enterprise Group.
The legal limit for melamine in foodstuffs in Hong Kong is 2.5ppm.
Hong Kong Secretary for Food and Health York Chow (周一嶽) said the melamine may have come from feed given to the chickens that laid the eggs.
The egg results have prompted officials to expand food testing to meat imports from China, Chow told reporters yesterday.
Chow said Hong Kong officials would step up checks of eggs imported from China.
Calls to Dalian Hanwei Enterprise Group, based in the northeastern port city Dalian, went unanswered yesterday.
In an earlier egg-related food safety scare in Hong Kong and China the banned cancer-causing industrial dye, Sudan Red, was used to color egg yolks.
ONE IN FOUR
In related news, nearly one quarter of Beijing families have fed their children milk contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine, state press reported yesterday.
In an indication of the scale of the tainted milk scandal that has rocked the country, more than 74,000 of nearly 308,000 households questioned in the capital said their children were fed the products before they were taken off the shelves, the Beijing News reported.
So far at least four infants have died in China, and 53,000 sickened across the country, from drinking milk tainted with melamine.
Normally used in making plastics and glue, melamine was added to baby milk formula and other dairy products to make them appear richer in protein.
The paper did not say how many — if any — of the fatalities occurred in Beijing.
The scandal broke early last month and has badly tarnished the image of Chinese dairy products, with countries around the world banning or curtailing Chinese imports.
DELAYS
Although at least one Chinese dairy firm knew of the problem for months, it did not immediately report it to local government officials.
They in turn delayed passing on the news for nearly a month until after the Olympics in August.
Beijing News said hospitals in the capital have reported that 3,458 infants have been hospitalized with kidney stones, the main symptom of ingesting the melamine.
More than 211,000 children have had urinary tract examinations at Beijing hospitals and medical clinics since the scandal broke, it said.
China is currently considering a draft food safety law that aims to prevent any cover-ups by health authorities while making them directly responsible for approving additives in processed foods, Xinhua news agency reported.
Also See: Cyanide find prompts food recall
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