Control Yuan members yesterday called on government health officials in charge of food safety to pay attention to potentially harmful food additives following a report that suggested they are widely used.
The report, which included tests on 50 food products, was written by Control Yuan members Cheng Jen-hung (程仁宏), Yang Mei-ling (楊美鈴), Chao Chang-ping (趙昌平) and Hung Chao-nan (洪昭男). It suggested that local governments should exercise sufficient supervision over food safety.
Cheng told a press conference yesterday that 44 percent of selected dried shrimp, 77 percent of selected dried radishes and 40 percent of selected cold noodles on the market did not meet standards.
PHOTO: CHU PEI-HSIUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
The Taichung County Government should tighten its supervision as almost all the dried shrimp examined by the Control Yuan were below hygiene standards, the report said.
Dried shrimp were found to contain excessive sulfur dioxide, which can cause breathlessness, vomiting and diarrhea, the report said, adding that dried radishes, which are often used in rice dumpings, were found to contain too much benzoic acid and sorbic acid — both food preservatives.
In a test of cold noodles to determine whether they contained pollutants, the researchers found high levels of colon bacillus in three out of eight samples in Taipei City and one out of seven in Taipei County.
Cheng said the Control Yuan would continue to monitor the problem over the next six months by inspecting food manufacturing factories around the country and pushing local health officials to strengthen food safety standards.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
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