During a question-and-answer session with Council of Agriculture (COA) Deputy Minister Wang Cheng-teng (王政騰) at the legislature yesterday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ting Shou-chung (丁守中) highlighted problems with tea leaves being used in the manufacturing of a range of products, citing concerns over reportedly excessive residues of pesticides.
At a committee meeting aimed at examining the governance of the safety and certification standards on food processing, Ting, in reference to a story published by the Chinese-language Business Today on Thursday last week, said that 13 percent of tea products marketed in the nation have pesticide residue levels exceeding the limits set forth by the council.
After commissioning the testing and certification company, SGS Taiwan, to analyze 58 samples from 53 products, Business Today said it found seven products which contained excessive pesticide residues, while one product, which was determined “safe” by the COA’s standards, contained residue from up to 22 types of pesticides, in contrast with the normal range of six to eight pesticides.
Apart from 10 bottled tea products which tested negative for residue, all the remaining merchandise were found to contain chemicals, the analysis showed.
Expressing doubts about the standards applied by the COA, Ting said the inordinate number of pesticides found in the products could have harmful effects on the human body.
He also expressed concerns over the amount of pesticide being imported. Citing statistics produced last year, he said the size of organic farmland in Taiwan increased by four times compared with ten years ago, but the amount of pesticide imported was still on the rise.
In response, Wang said that all tea leaves in circulation in the nation are sampled by the COA on a regular basis, and the results are published on the agency’s Web site.
Dissatisfied with his answer, Ting asked the deputy minister why he had not announced the results to the media.
Wang said that all the results from the analyses had been made available via media coverage.
According to a survey conducted by the Taiwan Tea Manufacturers’ Association, Taiwanese spend an average of NT$85 billion (US$2.8 billion) on tea products, of which bottled tea accounts for NT$25 billion, while the revenue of beverage chains amounts to NT$35 billion.
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