The EU has confirmed that Taiwanese food products contaminated by industrial plasticizers have been shipped to Europe.
So far, one batch of problematic products has entered Germany, while three shipments have reached Britain, Frederic Vincent, spokesman for the European Commission on Health and Consumer Policy, told reporters over the weekend.
However, the problem in Europe is no worse than in Canada, the US, China or Malaysia — Taiwan’s major export markets — Vincent said.
The EU health and policy commission, headed by European Commissioner John Dalli, is taking steps to monitor the tainted products and prevent them from reaching the wider market, Vincent said.
The commission will pay particular attention to those products listed by Taiwan’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as containing plasticizers, he said.
The FDA on June 1 identified 506 food products from 215 companies that were found to contain plasticizers that are usually used for industrial purposes, mainly to make plastics more flexible and durable.
The contamination issue came to light last month when an FDA inspector uncovered an illegal cost-cutting practice at two companies that were using di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, or DEPH, and other plasticizers to make clouding agents — additives that make foods and beverages look more appealing to consumers.
Vincent said that usually, plasticizers detected in food products exported to Europe come from the plastic packaging, adding that Europe regulates allowable levels of such chemical substances in food.
However, the food contamination incident in Taiwan is different in that it involves the deliberate use of plasticizers as food additives, he said.
Following the discovery of plasticizer contamination of a wide range of processed foods, beverages and diet supplements in Taiwan, the government ordered a full recall of problematic products and mandatory safety certification for all food and drink sold in stores.
Fast food chain McDonald's is to raise prices by up to NT$5 on some products at its restaurants across Taiwan, starting on Wednesday next week, the company announced today. The prices of all extra value meals and sharing boxes are to increase by NT$5, while breakfast combos and creamy corn soup would go up by NT$3, the company said in a statement. The price of the main items of those meals, if ordered individually, would remain the same. Meanwhile, the price of a medium-sized lemon iced tea and hot cappuccino would rise by NT$3, extra dipping sauces for chicken nuggets would go up
Yangmingshan National Park’s Qingtiangang (擎天崗) nature area has gone viral after a park livestream camera observed a couple in the throes of intimate congress, which was broadcast live on YouTube, drawing large late-night crowds and sparking a backlash over noise, bright lights and disruption to wildlife habitat. The area’s livestream footage appeared to show a couple engaging in sexual activity on a picnic table in the park on Friday last week, with the uncensored footage streamed publicly online. The footage quickly spread across social media, prompting a tide of visitors to travel to the site to “check in” and recreate the
Carrefour Taiwan is to begin using a new name from the start of July, but it cannot divulge the name until then, the chairman of the supermarket chain's parent company said today. President Chain Store Co chairman Lo Chih-hsien (羅智先) was asked by reporters after a shareholders' meeting to confirm whether the company has settled on a new name for the supermarket brand. In March, the government-registered name of two Carrefour Taiwan branches was quietly changed to "Le Chia Kang" (樂家康) in Chinese, raising speculation that has been selected as the name. Lo said that because of local regulations and contractual obligations, the
GROUNDED: A KMT lawmaker proposed eliminating drone development programs and freezing funding for counterdrone systems, despite China’s adoption of the technology China has deployed attack drones at air bases near the Taiwan Strait in a strategy aimed at overwhelming Taiwan’s air defense systems through saturation attacks, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said. The council’s latest quarterly report on China said that satellite imagery and open-source intelligence indicate that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had converted retired J-6 fighter jets into J-6W drones, which the PLA has stationed at six air bases near Taiwan, five in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province. The report cited J. Michael Dahm, a senior fellow at the US-based Mitchell Institute, as saying that China has
RSS