A Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmaker said yesterday a new government food safety certification regime should be created to replace the two principal systems that failed to prevent the widespread use of potentially harmful chemicals in food products.
Amid a tainted food scandal that continues to dominate headlines, DPP Legislator Hsu Tain-tsair (許添財) said many customers had lost confidence in the state’s ability to eliminate the use of banned chemicals in everyday products, foods and beverages, undermining the image of Taiwanese goods at home and abroad.
A new government certification, created especially to address such “loopholes” in the inspection process and add to the existing checks from the Certified Agricultural Standards (CAS) and Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) labels, would aim to allay such public concerns, Hsu said.
“Standing on the side of user-friendliness, the new certification would make the government hold responsibility for consumer safety. Not only would it aim to manage the source of the products, it would also monitor the entire [manufacturing] process,” he said.
The current certification regimes — the CAS and GMP labels — were created by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Council of Agriculture and are administered by industry groups.
Hsu said that direct public accountability, with government officials placed directly in charge of the new certification, was needed.
“If officials aren’t made responsible, then it means there is effectively no control,” Hsu said.
As it stands, when manufacturers don’t abide by health and safety practices, “they receive a fine, but there’s no real fear,” he said.
The proposed certification, which Hsu said he planned to introduce in the legislature, would serve as a form of safety guarantee, he said.
DPP lawmakers have already suggested they would back the proposal.
A statement given by the party yesterday said it would ask the government to consolidate the various food safety labels into a uniform platform “to better ensure public safety.”
A recent poll suggested almost seven in 10 members of the public said that they have lost confidence in the GMP label, citing the failure to discover the use of the chemical DEHP in clouding agents in sports drinks, juices, tea drinks, fruit syrup and tablets and powders.
DEHP, a category four substance, was also used to make flavorings and food coloring agents. Prolonged exposure has been linked to the stunted development of sex organs in males, hormone disruption and fertility problems.
The survey by the DPP showed that 67.9 percent of the public believed they or their families have at some point ingested goods containing the chemical.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods