A Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspection of meat and poultry products found residues of the chemical nicarbazin in two types of chicken egg products and one type of duck egg product.
The agency conducted the random inspection of 118 meat or poultry products at wholesale markets, egg farms, hyperrmarkets and supermarkets between March and May, testing for 126 types of drugs used on animals.
The products tested included 15 pork products, 20 meatball products, 42 chicken egg products, 16 duck egg products, 20 cow milk products and five goat milk products.
FDA Central Center for Regional Administration official Chen Tzu-ling (陳姿伶) said the affected chicken egg products were from Yu Chuan Farm (宇泉牧場) and Chang Hsiung Farm (章雄畜牧場), both in Pingtung County; and the duck eggs were from Hsing Lung Farm (興隆畜牧場) in Taichung.
Nicarbazin is a legal feed additive that contains a veterinary drug of a low toxicity, but it can cause harm to the kidneys if the concentration is high, the FDA said.
Council of Agriculture regulations stipulate that nicarbazin with a concentration between 100 parts per million (ppm) and 200ppm can be added to chicken feed, but chickens cannot be fed with nicarbazin within five days before products are brought to market and that feed containing nicarbazin cannot be given to egg-producing hens, the FDA said.
Chen said 2,732 eggs containing nicarbazin residue have been recalled and destroyed, and the farms could be fined between NT$60,000 and NT$200 million (US$1,874 and US$624,531), according to the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation (食品安全衛生管理法).
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
‘GROWING UP TOGETHER’: Jensen Huang celebrated the nation’s role in the formation of the tech firm at a Silicon Valley gathering, saying ‘Taiwan saved Nvidia’ Taiwan is in the center of the new artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) told a gathering with Taiwanese on Thursday in Silicon Valley’s largest city, San Jose. Tainan-born Huang said it must be celebrated that “Taiwan is right in the middle” of a new industrial revolution in which “something new is being made, and made in a new way.” Huang recalled the manufacturing process of the RIVA 128 graphics processing unit, Nvidia’s first commercial success, describing it as the “most complicated chip at the time.” As Nvidia did not have the budget, he wrote a letter to Taiwan