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.
RISK FACTORS: ‘We hope people can cooperate and endure it ... it is possibly the very important last mile,’ Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung said Taiwan’s COVID-19 restrictions and mask regulations are to remain the same next month, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday. The center reported 42,112 new local COVID-19 cases and 85 deaths, saying that the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients has dropped to a new low this month. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the CECC, said that the center is keeping COVID-19 restrictions and mask regulations the same due to the local virus situation, and an increase in the number of imported cases of the new Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 of SARS-CoV-2, among other risk factors. Easing
TRAVEL CONFERENCE: Representatives from the two countries exchanged views on how to increase tourist numbers, with one identifying individual travel as a trend Taiwan and South Korea aim to increase the number of tourists traveling between the two countries to 3 million, government and tourism industry representatives said at a conference in Hsinchu City yesterday. The annual event was attended by Deputy Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Yen-po (陳彥伯); Tourism Bureau Director-General Chang Shi-chung (張錫聰); Taiwan Visitors Association chairwoman Yeh Chu-lan (葉菊蘭); South Korean Representative to Taiwan Chung Byung-won; Yoon Ji-sook, an official at the South Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism; and Korea Association of Travel Agents chairman Oh Chang-hee. Global tourism is expected to soon rebound to between 55 and
DAMAGE CONTROL: The KMT in a statement called the Taiwan Strait ‘international waters,’ after Alexander Huang said China had the right to claim it as internal waters Lawmakers and experts yesterday accused the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) envoy to the US Alexander Huang (黃介正) of acting as China’s stooge, after he said that Beijing has the right to claim waters beyond its maritime territory as its exclusive economic zone and that the US has no legal basis to assert that the Taiwan Strait is an “international waterway.” Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu (王定宇) said in an online post that most of the world considers the Strait an international waterway, adding that this is important for safeguarding Taiwan. “We have seen US warships transiting through the Taiwan Strait.
The Taichung District Court yesterday sentenced to nine years in prison an unlicensed judo coach who caused the death of a seven-year-old student after slamming him onto the ground more than a dozen times. In its decision against the coach, a man surnamed Ho (何), the court cited his lack of remorse for using excessive force against an inadequately trained child and his failure to reconcile with the parents for his role in their son’s death. Speaking on behalf of the boy’s mother, Taichung City Councilor Jacky Chen (陳清龍) said the family would appeal to a higher court. Prosecutors said that Ho on
RSS