Two legislative committees jointly approved a draft law yesterday to establish the Taiwan Food and Drug Administration (TFDA), paving the way for the bill’s submission to the Legislative Yuan for further discussion.
At the meeting, which was attended by members of the Health, Environment and Labor Committee as well as the Judiciary, Organic Laws and Statutes Committee, legislators approved the TFDA Organic Law with several modifications, including a clause added to set up a review committee to ensure the effectiveness and safety of food and drug products.
Under the organic law approved by the Cabinet late last month, four offices and bureaus presently under the Department of Health (DOH) would be integrated to form the new body with a staff of 505.
The four bureaus are the Bureau of Food Safety, the Bureau of Pharmaceutical Affairs, the Bureau of Food and Drug Analysis and the National Bureau of Controlled Drugs.
DOH Minister Yeh Ching-chuan (葉金川) said the new organization would help strengthen control, speed up customs procedures and enhance consumer safety.
He said that the department has been censured twice by the Control Yuan recently — once over its inept handling of melamine-tainted milk powder imported from China and again over its handling of a case in which dragon fruit imported from Vietnam was found to be contaminated with pesticide residues. Yeh said the censures showed that improvements needed to be made in border control.
“Three management centers will be set up in northern, central and southern Taiwan to enhance border controls and testing at seaports and airports,” Yeh said.
At present, border controls and testing are conducted under the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Bureau of Standards, Metrology and Inspection.
Food and drinks businesses would also be included under the TFDA’s management, Yeh said.
The TFDA is also expected to be tasked with helping to develop the nation’s bio-medical industry.
Legislators at the meeting said that the DOH should enforce more controls on Chinese products, especially with the implementation of direct flights and shipping links that began earlier in the week.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the