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Health department to help local hunt for tainted products

The Department of Health announced yesterday it would provide NT$100,000 in funding to each county or city health department as well as manpower to aid the hunt for melamine-tainted ammonium bicarbonate.

In a press release, the department said it would rehire health department employees who had retired or resigned to enhance the efforts of local health departments to track down batches of the tainted leavening agent and finished products made with the material.

The department said yesterday that melamine had been detected in two batches of Chinese fried bread sticks at concentration levels of 3.37 parts per million (ppm) and 4.29ppm.

The contaminated bread sticks were discovered among food samples tested by local health authorities. The tests included cookies, bread, grilled squid, barbequed pork buns, wedding cakes, honeycomb cookies, cream puffs and other products.

Since its announcement about contaminated ammonium bicarbonate on Saturday, the department has been denying that it withheld information about the contamination.

On Saturday, a source speaking on condition of anonymity told the Taipei Times that health authorities had already detected melamine in ammonium bicarbonate more than a week before the announcement, but waited until Saturday to make it public.

Weng Ming-chang (翁明章), associate professor of applied economics at the National University of Kaohsiung, accused the department of withholding information for as long as 10 days before it made the announcement, the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported yesterday.

In response, department spokesperson Wang Je-chau (王哲超) said health officials were notified of possible contamination of ammonium bicarbonate by various sources in the second week of this month, but sent samples to the Food Industry Research and Development Institute for verification before making an official announcement.

Health officials came under fire for mishandling the melamine scandal after news first broke that tainted milk powder had been imported from China.

Criticism increased when the department raised the acceptable level for melamine content in food to 2.5ppm from zero.

Officials later decided to employ the department’s most sensitive testing method — liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry — to check for traces of melamine.

It also began testing a variety of local and imported products for the chemical.

Meanwhile, the department also asked the China Grain Products Research and Development Institute to provide a recipe for making Chinese fried bread sticks without baking ammonia, which has been posted on the department’s Web site.

The department will give out 200 Chinese fried bread sticks free of Chinese-made baking ammonia today — at 8:40 am at No. 8 Nanhai Rd — to promote the product as safe.
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