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Dairy products are safe: officials

Council of Agriculture (COA) and Department of Health (DOH) officials yesterday assured the public of the safety of domestic dairy products and promised to publicize test results on Monday following a food scare involving AGV Corp (愛之味) products.

“We have very strict regulations. Every farm needs to handle its dairy products very carefully because they will not pass our tests even if only a very small amount of residual medication is found [in the milk],” said Huang Ying-hau (黃英豪), chief of the COA’s Department of Animal Industry Development, at a press conference held by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus.

Huang’s assurance came after a front-page story in Wednesday’s Chinese-language Apple Daily that accused an employee of the Wenbin Farm in Yunlin County of selling milk that may have contained excessive antibiotic residues.

The COA’s Statute Governing Animal Medication (動物用藥使用標準) bans the sale of milk from cows that have just finished medication for mastitis.

The story said a member of staff surnamed Lee collected the milk from four other farms located in Changhua and Miaoli counties at a cost of NT$8 per kilogram every Wednesday and Sunday and then sold the milk to AGV’s dairy processing factory at the Farmer’s Association of Miaoli County for NT$18 per kilogram.

The report showed pictures of Lee’s milk truck, which bore the AGV “general milk (將軍牛乳),” logo while quoting Pan Jen-yen (潘仁炎), a quality manager from the factory, identifying the truck as the vehicle that had delivered dairy produce from AGV-contracted farms to the factory over the past two decades.

The story said the newspaper sent a bottle of the milk it obtained from Lee to a lab and the results showed the milk contained traces of an “unknown anti-bacterial substance” that did not come from common antibiotics used by farms to treat cows.

The story also said the results from four other AGV dairy products the newspaper purchased showed residues of antibiotics, but the amounts did not exceed the COA’s regulations.

AGV issued a statement on Wednesday which said it was recalling all dairy products manufactured at the processing plant indefinitely.

Pao Tse-min (鮑澤民), an AGV director-general, said the company only used certified farms and certified milk, adding that the company did not do any business with Wenbin Farm.

David Cheng (鄭慧文), director of the DOH’s Bureau of Food Sanitation, said the bureau had sent personnel to Miaoli to investigate the matter.

He guaranteed the safety of dairy products, saying that all of the 243 samples the DOH tested last year met the legal standards.

When asked what related government agencies would do if similar cases occurred, Huang said though he believed domestic dairy companies would safeguard their reputations, the council would also increase its random inspections.
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