A batch of hairy crabs imported from China has been found to contain traces of leuco-malachite green, a banned dye used as an antibiotic in aquaculture, and the Department of Health has ordered the 2 tonne shipment be destroyed.
The head of the department’s Food and Drug Administration District Center, Pan Chih-kuan (潘志寬), said testing showed levels of leuco-malachite at 4 parts per billion for the batch of crabs.
As the department has a zero-tolerance policy on leuco-malachite green under its standards for veterinary drug residue limits in foodstuffs, the shipment violated the Act Governing Food Sanitation (食品衛生管理法) and the items must be destroyed or returned.
The import of Chinese hairy crabs, also called mitten crabs or Dazha crabs (大閘蟹), was allowed to start again this year after being suspended for the past six years.
Department officials said they are keeping a close eye on imports by testing all shipments. Up to this week there have been 124 shipments totaling 31,000kg.
Among the shipments, two batches with a combined weight of 3,000kg contained residues of leuco-malachite green, and Enrofloxacin — another antibiotic substance.
They were stopped at ports and destroyed or returned.
Lin Chieh-liang (林杰樑), director of the Department of Toxicology at Linkuo Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, said leuco-malachite green is a dye used in industry, but is often misused in food and animal products as an antibiotic.
Lin said it has found to be potentially carcinogenic in animals, and clinical testing has shown it can damage the liver and kidneys and may lead to a higher risk of fetus deformation.
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
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater