In order to ease consumer anxiety, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) will consult with the Council of Agriculture (COA) over its plan to purchase rice which a survey suggests may be contaminated.
EPA head Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said yesterday that the agency is considering purchasing all rice grown in fields that a "rough EPA survey" shows may be contaminated by heavy metals, including mercury and cadmium.
"The EPA will have no problem with allocating money for the purchase of the suspect rice," Hau said.
Hau said a comprehensive examination of the suspect fields and crops would be conducted as soon as possible.
If any of the crops purchased by the EPA meet food safety standards, Hau said, the agency would urge the COA to buy them for subsequent resale.
If heavy metals are discovered in any of the crops, Hau said, the EPA would incinerate them and demand that the polluted fields be kept fallow to allow for a thorough cleanup.
According to the EPA's survey on soil in Taiwan, about 319 hectares of agricultural land has been confirmed as contaminated by one or more toxic heavy metals.
EPA officials said yesterday that crops that were grown in the contaminated fields would be purchased by the agency, but that the total cost of the program was still uncertain.
However, Lin Chien-hui (林建輝), executive-general of the EPA's Committee for Soil Pollution and Groundwater Pollution Remediation Fund, told the Taipei Times yesterday that the purchase could cost as much as NT$20 million.
EPA officials said that the administration will consult with COA officials soon and they hope to come up with a plan to purchase the poisonous food grain within two weeks.
The first instance of cadmium-contaminated rice was discovered in Taiwan in 1979.
Since then, other cases have occasionally come to light.
This year, cases of contaminated rice have been reported in Taichung, Changhua and Yunlin counties.
Agricultural officials from the COA's Central Taiwan Division said yesterday that they have conducted a comprehensive survey of rice and have found cadmium and mercury-contaminated fields.
So far, officials say the council's Taiwan Agricultural Chemicals and Toxic Substances Research Institute has found that cadmium or mercury-contaminated rice was grown on 4.3ha of land in central Taiwan.
The results of similar surveys conducted elsewhere are as yet unavailable.
"In addition to a rough survey, the EPA should have conducted comprehensive testing of the crops grown to obtain a more detailed picture of soil pollu-tion," COA official Chen Hann-yang (陳漢洋) told the Taipei Times yesterday.
Chen said that the purchase of contaminated crops and quarantine of contaminated fields were only intermediate, stop-gap measures that were intended to keep heavy-metal laced foods off the market.
"Farmers are victims of soil pollution," Chen said.
The law stipulates that farmers required by the government to stop planting on polluted land must be compensated by the government at the rate of NT$ 27,000 per hectare.
Chen called upon the EPA to trace the sources of the contamination as soon as possible to prevent new cases. He also said it was necessary to punish violators.
The EPA is investigating possible links between soil pollution of agricultural land in central Taiwan and nearby industrial complexes.
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