The Council of Agriculture yesterday said it on Saturday investigated three animal feed manufacturers that have imported large amounts of cottonseed meal over the past two years and found that the meal had been used in the companies’ products.
The council on Saturday said that the manufacturers had imported the cottonseed meal because of its low price and used it to replace more expensive high-protein ingredients.
The council’s Department of Animal Husbandry yesterday said its understanding is that the three animal feed manufacturers, which imported a total of 7,724 tonnes from Australia, used the cottonseed meal to replace soy bean powder, which is normally used in animal feed.
The percentage of cottonseed meal used in animal feed was between 2 percent and 3 percent, the department said.
Cottonseed meal is often used in animal feed in the US, Australia, China, India and other countries that produce cottonseed, it said, adding that in Taiwan the percentage of gossypol from cottonseed meal in animal feed may not exceed 0.04 percent.
Manufacturers are required to ask the seller to provide an examination report on the quality of the meal, it added.
Due to the relative low volume of cottonseed meal imports, compared with about 2 million tonnes of soy bean powder import, the council did not conduct any sample inspections to confirm the quality, it said.
After investigations into two fertilizer companies’ usage of cottonseed meal as growth substrate in mushroom cultivation bags on Saturday, the council said that a total of 1,374 tonnes of cottonseed hulls (also categorized as cottonseed meal by customs) had been imported from India, Pakistan and China since last year.
The cottonseed hulls do not contain oil and can improve the water retention ability of mushroom growth substrate, it said, adding that gossypol cannot be absorbed by the plant’s root and can be broken down by microbes.
Although its initial findings showed that cottonseed meal was not used for illegal purposes, the council will still send inspection personnel to the companies today to verify the ingredients used in animal feed and test samples to confirm the percentage of gossypol in the products, Huang said, adding that they are also gathering information about the related regulations in other countries.
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