A herbal tea ingredient used by a Kaohsiung-based shop was found to contain pesticide residues at a level nearly 120 times the maximum permissible amount, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said yesterday.
Six products were added to the list of contaminated beverages in the latest round of random tests on hand-shaken drinks, bringing the total number of deficient products to 65 since the agency launched inspections earlier this month in the wake of a widespread pesticide scare.
Four products were sold in Kaohsiung, including a wedelia flower product used by a herbal tea store in the special municipality’s Cianjhen District (前鎮) that were found to contain 6 parts per million (ppm) of hexaconazole, 120 times the legal level of 0.05ppm.
Photo courtesy of the Kaohsiung City Department of Health
White crane flowers at the same store were tainted with five pesticides at a high level, including chlorantraniliprole, flutolanil and tetramethrin, the agency said.
All contaminated products have been pulled off store shelves and their manufacturers are to be subjected to fines ranging from NT$30,000 to NT$3 million (US$977 to US$97,694) in accordance with the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation (食品安全衛生管理法).
As of 10am yesterday, the administration had tested 862 samples of tea beverage ingredients, with the results of 109 still pending.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
RSS