A random inspection of “instant” salads and cut fruit showed that 25 percent of products contained pathogenic bacteria exceeding allowable levels, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said yesterday.
FDA Research and Analysis Division official Lin Hsu-yang (林旭陽) said the agency last year collected 100 samples of pre-prepared salads and cut fruit products to test for five types of pathogenic bacterium: Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus cereus, enteropathogenic Escherichia coli, Listeria monocytogenes and salmonella.
Among the samples, 25 contained pathogenic bacterium — 23 had S aureus<.i>, one had Listeria and another one had salmonella, he said.
“Staphylococcus aureus can often be found on the surface of human skin, so sometimes, if the people who handled the fruit and vegetables did not wash their hands properly or if they have bad personal hygiene, the food can be exposed to the bacteria,” Lin said.
He said eating food containing too much of the bacteria can cause symptoms such as vomiting, diarrhea or abdominal pain, and it is one of the most common types of food poisoning.
“The incubation period of listeriosis, a serious infection usually caused by eating food contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, can be as long as three weeks, and the infection can cause serious diseases in people with weaker immune systems, elderly people, newborn babies or pregnant women,” Lin said.
He said people should cook sprouts and leafy vegetables, wash vegetables thoroughly for at least 10 to 15 minutes, and rinse pre-prepared salads with boiled water before eating to avoid possible infection.
Meanwhile, Lin also advised people not to drink untreated mountain spring water, saying that norovirus has been detected at three locations in Taiwan in the past 18 months and had caused food poisoning in more than 300 people.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods