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TSU lawmakers slam initiative on Chinese medicine

Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) legislators yesterday spoke up against alleged Department of Health plans to establish a quality assessment center for Chinese medicine entering Taiwan in China.

TSU Legislator Yin Ling-ying (尹伶瑛) said this would put the quality of Chinese medicine in Taiwan at risk, as China was a country controlled under the principles of "human rule."

With an increasing number of reports regarding bad-quality food products, the government embarked on a five-year initiative last year to increase the safety of Chinese medicinal products.

"Under the initiative, approval of Chinese medicine will be done in China, documentation relating to both parties will be authorized in China, the assessment of the standard of the quality assessment center will be done in China, while there will be no quality checks done by customs on the medicine upon entry in Taiwan," she said.

"Yet it is common knowledge that money can do anything in China; even authorization can be bought," she said.

Yin said that the government would do better to use the NT$66 million earmarked for the project to strengthen existing quality assessment resources in Taiwan instead.

She also raised questions about why the government wasn't also setting up quality assessment centers in other countries where Taiwan's Chinese-medicine ingredients were imported from, such as Japan, Korea, and Canada.

Chair of the Taipei Chinese Herbal Apothecary Association Huang Ching-sung (黃錦松) said that existing quality assurance checks were already quite stringent, with checks first made by health authorities in the country the ingredients were imported from and random checks further conducted by customs in Taiwan.

Huang further defended the quality of Chinese-medicine ingredients in Taiwan, saying, "It is not like Chinese Medicine and Pharmacy committee members say, that Taiwan only gets ingredients which other countries don't want. We get top quality ingredients from around the world."

Director of the Chinese Medicine and Pharmacy Division, Chen Chung-tse (陳宗哲), said that the plan was not to establish a quality assessment center in China, but to employ the services of an existing laboratory in China which had the same assessment grade as laboratories in Taiwan, as decided by an impartial assessment center.

"It will reduce the risk of bad-quality ingredients coming into the country. If the ingredients don't pass quality checks they will not be allowed into Taiwan. In this way, we actually have more control over operations there [China]," Chen said.
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