Strict sanitation rules to be applied to fishery products

The Council of Agriculture (COA), together with the Department of Health and the Environmental Protection Administration, yesterday announced new policies to crack down on the sanitation standards of agricultural and fishery products.

"The Chinese Agricultural Standards (CAS) certification has long been used in meat products, but has never been extended to fresh fish products," explained Hu Fu-Hsiung (胡富雄), Deputy Minister of the Council of Agriculture.

"Currently, we do random checks before fish are sold on the market, but we plan to begin performing tests at fishery sites between now and February, in time for the Lunar New Year," said Bret Lin (林子清), chief of the COA's food technology and processing division.

He said that consumption of fish products usually increased during the New Year holiday.

According to the council, nine inspection sites have been established in different areas of Taiwan.

"We will set up a labeling system so that restaurants can put up a standardized logo indicating that it sells fresh fish products from CAS certified fisheries," Hu said.

The COA hopes to implement the system some time in February.

The announcement follows Japan's rejection last month of a batch of Taiwanese eels that had been contaminated by antibiotics. The EU also rejected 30 tonnes of Taiwanese shrimp and fish between August and October after detecting a residue of chloramphenicol, a carcinogenic substance, in the products.

Hu also explained that inspection regulations would be made more efficient. The period of five to 22 days currently needed for meat inspection results to be prepared is to be shortened to four or five days, preventing unsafe meat from being sold on the market before inspection results are announced. The number of cases currently being inspected will also be increased fourfold between now and February.

The COA reported that NT$20 million has been spent on purchasing inspection equipment that would bring detection sensitivity up to par with that of the EU and Japan.

"Our export products passed sanitation inspections in Taiwan but failed EU and Japanese inspections because their equipment has a higher degree of detection sensitivity. The equipment we now have is of the same quality as that of the EU and Japan," Hu said.