As the salmonella crisis in the US continues, the Taiwan Food and Drug Administration (FDA) yesterday warned the public against consuming raw eggs.
In the US, half a billion eggs have been recalled in the past month after thousands of people were sickened from eating eggs contaminated with the salmonella enteriditis bacteria. The bacterium lives in the digestive tract and animal waste and is typically spread via birds, flies, mice and other animals.
Salmonella is spread most often by consuming food contaminated by animal fecal matter. Symptoms of salmonella infection include vomiting, stomach ache, diarrhea, dehydration, headaches, fever and loss of appetite for several days.
Although the outbreak in the US has not spread to Taiwan and no eggs from infected farms are known to have made their way into the country, local health authorities are monitoring the situation closely.
The FDA yesterday warned against eating raw or not fully cooked eggs, which can increase the risk of salmonella infection. Bacteria cannot survive under high temperature and fully cooking an egg would kill it, health officials said. The egg should be heated for at least 10 minutes at temperatures above 75˚C so that the center is fully cooked.
Consumers are advised to wash their hands after handling eggs, especially those that have not been machine-selected. The FDA also advised consumers to take notice of the expiration date, and to keep raw and cooked foods separate when preparing meals.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching