Liberty Times (LT): Aside from the recent discovery of di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, or DEHP, being added to foods, this past month alone there have been reports of ractopamine and antibiotics being found in lunches offered at schools. What do you think the crux of the problem is concerning food safety in the nation?
Lucy Sun Hwang (孫璐西): All food should be additive-free, but everyone likes cheap, fresh-looking and tasty food, so more and more additives are being put in.
The recent food scares represent different problems and pose different dangers. In the case of antibiotics and ractopamine, although both of them are legally prohibited additives, of the two, ractopamine represents a smaller risk to health.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
In the early period of Taiwan’s development, the Council of Agriculture completely banned the use of lean-meat essences to safeguard public health, but in studies some lean-meat essences have been shown to be less of a health hazard and can now be considered for use, while other essences are indeed harmful to health and should not be used. The health risks vary.
To meet commercial needs, there are at least 28 countries worldwide that authorize the use of the safer lean-meat essences, such as ractopamine, limiting its usage to within a range of residue that is safe for the human body. Research shows the ingestion of ractopamine-laced pork may lead to symptoms of an accelerated heart beat, high blood pressure or bronchodilation.
The point is effective control management and to prevent the ingestion of overly dangerous chemicals.
Antibiotics of course share the same problems [as lean-meat essences], since they are primarily infused with preservatives to extend the preservation of meats. It would be best if [food businesses] stop using preservatives altogether and just throw away rotting meat, but this would drive up prices and increase overheads.
Again, people should not be too worried about preservatives, as preservatives are not entirely prohibited, but they should be given time to be metabolized out of the body without leaving residues.
The recent discovery of DEHP in clouding agents revealed not just the excessive use of clouding agents in the nation, but also the shock of finding that DEHP is being used, a chemical that has been regarded as an endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDC) for the past decade.
It’s not that foods absolutely can’t have chemical additives. The Department of Health currently lists 17 food additives that are legal and the names of many of the additives may even shock consumers, such as bleach, nitrites, coloring agents and leavening agents.
For example, the red cherries that everyone likes so much are actually white to start with and have been colored red to make them appear more tasty. Milk has added nitrites to make it look creamy white, and dried bananas, dried mangoes and other dried fruits often have added nitrites so that they keep their color, or else they would appear aesthetically unpleasing to consumers.
However, these additives have been made legal after years of study has shown they do not do any harm to the human body and they have a residual amount that doesn’t harm the human body even if they are eaten for many years.
These legal additives are also simple chemical compounds and are easily detectable under examination.
Clouding agents are complex compounds of food grade materials, including multiple substances, such as latex and palm oil. The primary function of these agents is to emulsify oils with liquid and not cause them to be separated, stratified or become deposits within a fluid.
It is precisely because clouding agents are complex compound recipes and there are a variety of ways of making them that makes it hard to examine them and find problematic elements. Adding to that the fact that DEHP is listed for inspections pertaining to food containers and not foodstuffs themselves, that is the reason why food safety officials did not discover the rampant use of EDCs and did not move to take food samples to specifically examine them for DEHP.
LT: It was because of the perseverance of a single food safety inspector who first became suspicious of a rare contamination she discovered when routinely checking beverages and foodstuffs that the use of DEHP was exposed. While it was a laudable act, does it also suggest the inefficacy of governmental and corporate measures to uphold standards?
Sun Hwang: The process of food examination is actually interlinked and people at every level have a duty to safeguard quality, both in the government and in businesses. The problem is that most upstream food processing plants are small and medium-sized businesses that lack knowledge concerning food safety measures.
Whether manufacturers are using [DEHP-laced clouding agents] purposefully or unwittingly, or whether production technologies need to be improved, these are things that the government should understand before addressing the crux of the problem. If it is the latter, then is it very possibly that the problem exists in all upstream producers and it must be tackled at its roots.
That small food businesses lack basic food security knowledge may be seen in the 1979 incident when rice bran oil laced with polychlorinated biphenyl caused more than 2,000 people to be poisoned by heavy metals, such as lead and mercury, leading to chemical-caused dermatitis, a condition that continued in the next generation as women gave birth to children who also suffered from dermatitis. The reason for the initial outbreak was unclear — some said it might have been caused by heat-transfer oil that made its way into cooking oil, but others said manufacturers had put cooking oil in discarded drums that once held polychlorinated biphenyl.
What is even sadder about the incident this time is that although the small factories may be lacking in scientific knowledge or have inadequate examination technology, some larger manufacturers and food material companies were also unable to maintain adequate quality inspections.
Haven’t the downstream businesses been suspicious about the materials provided by upstream manufacturers that are not only cheap, but also extremely effective?
It is the mindset and carelessness of companies that do not ask for the actual materials used to make the solution, or the state of the actual solution, that is worrisome.
According to the law, only food manufacturers that are registered can make and sell foodstuffs, but the latest incident suggests that processing plants such as Yu Shen Chemical Co are not only making food additives, but are also able to register as chemical materials plants, which is equivalent to the government arbitrarily letting food materials be placed next to industrial-grade chemicals.
DEHP is only listed as a Category Four toxic material and the Environmental Protection Administration has no way of controlling the channels through which DEHP is trafficked. That DEHP has been sold into food factories while the administration is completely unaware shows that the management of toxic substances should be tightened and focused on controlling substances at their source.
TRANSLATED BY JAKE CHUNG, STAFF WRITER
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