The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) yesterday announced that it has identified a soybean emulsifier made by Chien Hsin Enterprise (芊鑫實業社) as the original source of prohibited dye dimethyl yellow that Hong Kong’s Center for Food Safety found in Te Chang Food’s (德昌食品) prepackaged pepper-flavored dried tofu earlier this month.
“Following the center’s discovery, the administration conducted thorough tests on Te Chang’s products. All of the 19 raw materials tested were found negative for the banned industrial dye, but the cancer-causing substance was discovered in two semi-finished products: oily tofu skin (油皮) and the pepper-flavored dried tofu,” FDA senior specialist Wang Te-yuan (王德原) told a press conference in Taipei yesterday morning.
Wang said that three of the eight complete Te Chang products that it tested — the pepper-flavored, shiitake mushroom-flavored and Taiwan-style satay-flavored dried tofu — were also found to contain dimethyl yellow, which the government banned after research linked it to an increased risk of liver cancer in animals.
Photo: Lin Tzu-hsiang, Taipei Times
Interim FDA director-general Chiang Yu-mei (姜郁美) said that a further investigation found that Te Chang’s problematic dried tofu products were primarily made of oily tofu skin it purchased from Changhua County-based Chiu Yuan Enterprise (久元企業社).
“Chiu Yuan manufactured the oily tofu skin with soybeans, salad oil, calcium sulfate and soybean product emulsifier produced by Greater Tainan’s Chien Hsin, which Chiu Yuan acquired via Greater Taichung’s Sung Shun Firm (松順行),” Chiang said.
Chiang said that the Greater Tainan Government’s health agency subsequently inspected Chien Hsin’s factory on Thursday and Friday last week, where it collected samples of seven products for testing, including the main ingredients of the emulsifier.
Chien Hsin proprietor Lu Chia-chien (盧嘉芊) then notified the agency the following day that her company had used an “oily yellow powder” (油脂黃粉) in the production of the emulsifier, Chiang said, adding that test results found dimethyl yellow in two items.
“Between June and this month, Chien Hsin has sold a total of 25,760kg of the potentially tainted emulsifier to 11 food companies across the country, including Sung Shun Firm. These firms are required to recall all affected products by midnight on Saturday,” Chiang said.
Prosecutors have detained Lu and her father incommunicado since Sunday on charges of fraud and violating the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation (食品安全衛生管理法), authorities said.
According to the FDA, Chien Hsin could face a fine ranging from NT$30,000 to NT$3 million (US$1,000 and NT$99,800) for failing to register “oily yellow powder” as an ingredient in the emulsifier with the administration’s food ingredients registration platform.
It also faces another maximum fine of NT$3 million for failing to report the actual ingredients of the product to health authorities upon inspection, as well as another fine of up to NT$50 million for selling edible products laced with banned food additives.
The FDA said that in addition to Te Chang, Chiu Yuan also sold the oily tofu skin to four other food manufacturers this year, including D.E. Chung Hua Foods Co (得意中華食品), Tian-Su Food (天素食品) and Yu Hsiang Food Co (裕香食品), all of which have been ordered to suspend their shipping orders.
Yu Hsiang’s spicy dried tofu is also among the three soybean products recently tested by the FDA at the request of the Greater Taichung Health Bureau that were found to contain dimethyl yellow, along with Huang Dah Mu Foods Co’s (黃大目食料品) pepper-flavored dried tofu and Bao Hong Co’s (寶鴻企業) satay-flavored dried tofu, it added.
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