Local importers of French bottled water brands Volvic and Vittel sent their products for testing yesterday after reports surfaced in France that the brands’ water had been discovered to contain traces of pesticides.
Lin Wei-chuan (林偉權), a manager at Kuang Chuan Dairy Co, which imports 360,000 to 400,000 liters of Volvic a year, said its tests results are expected tomorrow.
If the products are confirmed to be tainted, they will all be returned to their manufacturer, even if only a small amount of pesticides are found, Lin said.
Some retailers have already pulled the product off their shelves pending the test results, Lin said.
Volvic water is sold at most major department stores, hypermarkets, supermarkets and convenience stores across the nation.
Hsu Chuan-chuan (許娟娟), a spokeswoman for Tait Marketing & Distribution Co, which imports 17,800 liters of Vittel bottled water a year, said test results on its products will be released today.
The company respects whatever decision its retailers take on whether to pull Vittel from their shelves, Hsu said.
Foreign reports say tjat a recent investigation by French consumer magazine 60 Millions de Consommateurs discovered that 10 brands of bottled water sold in France contained residues of pesticides or prescription drugs.
Of these, Volvic and Vittel were found to contain pesticides banned in 2001, the reports said.
However, the magazine stressed that the level of contamination was negligible and that the brands of bottled water it tested were still safe to drink.
Tsai Shu-chen (蔡淑貞), a section chief with the Food and Drug Administration, said it has contacted the French Institute in Taipei for further information.
The government requested that importers release a general report on their bottled water within three days and a detailed report within seven days, Tsai said.
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
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
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