Lawmakers across party lines yesterday reached an agreement to push through an amendment to the Act Governing Food Sanitation (食品衛生管理法), before the legislature goes into recess on June 14, which would increase the penalty for food safety violations.
Contamination in food and beverages has so far been traced to two additive makers — Yu Shen Chemical Co and Pin Han Perfumery Co — which used di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate plasticizer (DEHP) and diisononyl phthalate (DINP) respectively in their clouding agents sold to food processors.
Data from the Department of Health showed that 215 manufacturers have possibly used clouding agents from either Yu Shen or Pin Han.
Meanwhile, in response to questions raised by legislators and the public over the Environmental Protection Administration’s (EPA) apparent lack of enforcement of the Toxic Chemical Substances Control Act (毒性化學物質管理法), the agency said yesterday that food is regulated by the Act Governing Food Sanitation, which is enforced by the Department of Health.
“However, the incident has caused such a public panic, the EPA will go through administrative procedures to evaluate whether it [DEHP] should be listed as a Category 2 toxic chemical substance under the Toxic Chemical Substances Control Act,” EPA official Sung Chun-ping (宋浚泙) said, adding that the EPA would also take stricter measures to enforce the management of Category 4 toxic chemical substances.
DEHP is included in the List of Group 2B carcinogens by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. The list includes substances that are possible causes of cancer in humans, but which have not so far been proved to do so, Sung said, adding that this was why the substance was listed by the EPA as a Category 4 toxic chemical.
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
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