The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) yesterday said that it did not rule out instrument error in its discovery that the ingredients of a black tea drink made by tea store chain Easy Way (休閒小站) contained fipronil, a pesticide, at a level slightly above the legal limit.
“We have referred the case to the Taipei City Government’s Department of Health, which is to ascertain whether the potentially tainted batch of black tea leaves sold to Easy Way by Ten Ren Tea Co (天仁茶業) was produced domestically or imported,” FDA Northern Center for Regional Administration senior specialist Wang Te-yuan (王德原) told a news conference in Taipei.
Given that the concentration of fipronil residue detected in the tea leaves was 0.003 parts per million (ppm), compared with the maximum allowable level of 0.002ppm, the administration did not rule out instrument error, Wang said, adding that Ten Ren sought a retest.
Photo: CNA
Ten Ren and Easy Way are the latest tea vendors implicated in a widening pesticide scare, which, according to the FDA’s statistics, has ensnared 32 handshaken tea products nationwide, including some from tea store chains Stornaway (英國藍), Maisadou (舞茶道), Coffee Alley (咖啡弄) and Madam Rose Coffee and Tea Salon (玫瑰夫人).
Taipei’s Department of Health said that based on its preliminary probe, the tea leaves it tested were imported by Ten Ren from Vietnam via a third company.
“A total of 192kg of the tea leaves, which are to expire on March 26, 2017, were sold to Easy Way on March 25, and were used by the chain’s 24 branches,” the department said, adding that the products have been taken off store shelves pending results of the retest.
Ten Ren deputy general manager Chuang Yuan-ming (莊遠明) said the company has subjected its tea leaves to batch examinations since 2004, including 74 batches of black tea leaves tested for pesticide residue between 2013 and last month — all of which passed.
“Since most kinds of pesticides used by tea farmers are insoluble in water, their residue — if any — in tea leaves will not be released into hot water... That means people will not consume pesticides just from drinking tea,” Chuang said.
Separately yesterday, Minister of Health and Welfare Chiang Been-huang (蔣丙煌) said the next targets for inspections would be soybeans, flour and edible oils.
“The ministry has a comprehensive food inspection plan in place, but since there are so many edible products in the nation, we must prioritize,” Chiang said in Taipei yesterday on the sidelines of an award ceremony for senior nursing staff at 26 ministry-affiliated hospitals.
Chiang said in addition to improving implementation of its three-tier food-quality control system and of border controls, the ministry has scheduled random product inspections that could bring serious repercussions if problematic substances are detected.
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