"Basil feared to cause cancer," ran one of many media headlines that appeared in February. "The Internet rumors are real! Basil contains carcinogens, Department of Health (DOH) says," ran another.
Just in the past year, Taiwan has had a number of food scares, including the "carcinogenic crab fiasco," which saw the Bureau of Food Safety (BFS) director Hsia Tung-ming (蕭東銘) step down, and the "coppery oysters" scare that saw oyster sales plummet overnight in some markets. While consumer groups, some legislators and some experts think that the public is right to be concerned about foods that might be harmful, others say in reality the risks are low.
"It is not meaningful to say that a poison or carcinogen or contagion is present in a food item if you do not also tell me that it is present at a level which presents a significant risk," said Hsieh Hsien-tang (
A study conducted by the Bureau of Food and Drug Analysis said that safrole, a substance that has been found to induce liver cancer in rats when given in large quantities, is found in basil at the rate of 1mg to 25mg per kilogram. Asian basil is featured in many of the country's favorite dishes, but is usually used in small amounts.
"You would have to eat kilograms of basil every day for years on end before having to start worrying about its carcinogenic properties," said researcher Wen Chi-pang (溫啟邦). "Meanwhile, nobody is talking about betel nuts, which contain 1,000 times more safrole than basil on top of its other deleterious effects."
Hsieh most recently served on a panel of experts assessing the risk of US and Canadian beef. Despite the objection of one of the panel members who quit in protest, the panel concluded that North American beef was statistically safe, despite intermittent cases of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) in recent years.
Hsieh's critics disagree with his approach to risk assessment.
Chen Shun-sheng (陳順勝), vice-superintendent of Mackay Hospital, is the panelist who quit in protest.
"Hsieh is treating prions as a poison instead of a contagion which will remain in our soil forever," Chen said. "US beef is not irreplaceable or essential ... We should not take the risk without a more thorough assessment."
"For every occurrence, no matter how horrible, there is a point beyond which the risk is so small that it is worth taking," Hsieh said in defense of the panel's recommendation that the ban on US and Canadian beef be lifted.
Hsieh and Wen called for the public and the media to pay more attention to risks such as riding scooters unsafely, eating too much fast food and removing arsenic in groundwater even though those issues are less headline-grabbing.
"I think there is a fear of the unknown that leads people to give food scares undue weight, especially given their sensational and graphical depiction in the media," Hsieh said. "Yet at the same time, there is no outrage in Taipei, the capital of our country, over half the raw sewage produced going straight into the Tamsui river untreated."
There is also a class dimension to the focus on exotic food scares over existing and well-known public health problems, Wen said.
"Ten percent of Taiwanese still do not have access to municipal water, so they have to rely on underground water, often laced with cancer-causing arsenic," Wen said. "But this is not as big an issue in the press as dioxin-tainted goats' milk or copper-containing oysters because it is an issue that only affects the marginalized."
"What we need to address is the disparity in life expectancy of the haves and have-nots," Wen said. "There is a 13-year gap in life expectancy between those who live in Taipei and those who live in Taitung."
However, the Consumers' Foundation, which sounded the alarm on high levels of copper in oysters in March, said that people of all classes were affected by unsafe food.
"Beef and oysters are staples enjoyed by most Taiwanese," Consumers' Foundation chairman Cheng Jen-hung (程仁宏) said. "We need to be vigilant because all small risks add up over time and long term risks are hard to assess."
An increase in Taiwanese boats using China-made automatic identification systems (AIS) could confuse coast guards patrolling waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast and become a loophole in the national security system, sources familiar with the matter said yesterday. Taiwan ADIZ, a Facebook page created by enthusiasts who monitor Chinese military activities in airspace and waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast, on Saturday identified what seemed to be a Chinese cargo container ship near Penghu County. The Coast Guard Administration went to the location after receiving the tip and found that it was a Taiwanese yacht, which had a Chinese AIS installed. Similar instances had also
GOOD DIPLOMACY: The KMT has maintained close contact with representative offices in Taiwan and had extended an invitation to Russia as well, the KMT said The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) would “appropriately handle” the fallout from an invitation it had extended to Russia’s representative to Taipei to attend its international banquet last month, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said yesterday. US and EU representatives in Taiwan boycotted the event, and only later agreed to attend after the KMT rescinded its invitation to the Russian representative. The KMT has maintained long-term close contact with all representative offices and embassies in Taiwan, and had extended the invitation as a practice of good diplomacy, Chu said. “Some EU countries have expressed their opinions of Russia, and the KMT respects that,” he
VIGILANCE: The military is paying close attention to actions that might damage peace and stability in the region, the deputy minister of national defense said The People’s Republic of China (PRC) might consider initiating a hack on Taiwanese networks on May 20, the day of the inauguration ceremony of president-elect William Lai (賴清德), sources familiar with cross-strait issues said. While US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s statement of the US expectation “that all sides will conduct themselves with restraint and prudence in the period ahead” would prevent military actions by China, Beijing could still try to sabotage Taiwan’s inauguration ceremony, the source said. China might gain access to the video screens outside of the Presidential Office Building and display embarrassing messages from Beijing, such as congratulating Lai
Four China Coast Guard ships briefly sailed through prohibited waters near Kinmen County, Taipei said, urging Beijing to stop actions that endanger navigation safety. The Chinese ships entered waters south of Kinmen, 5km from the Chinese city of Xiamen, at about 3:30pm on Monday, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement later the same day. The ships “sailed out of our prohibited and restricted waters” about an hour later, the agency said, urging Beijing to immediately stop “behavior that endangers navigation safety.” Ministry of National Defense spokesman Sun Li-fang (孫立方) yesterday told reporters that Taiwan would boost support to the Coast Guard