With the winter hotpot season fast approaching, the Taichung Health Bureau said a recent inspection of popular frozen ingredients for home cooking found that 13.3 percent failed to meet hygiene standards and it asked that they be pulled from stores.
The agency said it collected random samples of 83 items of frozen sliced meats, shrimp, meatballs, dumplings, tofu and other common ingredients, and tested them for veterinary drug residues and bacteria, including total plate count, Escherichia coli and coliform bateria.
Eleven of the items failed to meet the required standards, it said.
Three of the items that failed were produced by factories within the city, the bureau said, so it has advised its counterparts in other counties and cities to investigate them further.
Of those items produced in Taichung, a frozen tofu item made by Northwest Foods (西北食品) in the Shengang District (神岡) and codfish balls sold by Taiwan Fresh Supermarket (台灣楓康超市) failed the primary inspection and have been temporarily barred from production or sale.
The third local item has passed a second inspection and been allowed to return to the shelves.
Among the items that failed the primary inspection were Dahan (大漢) non-genetic modified tofu by Brothers Farm Foods (川武食品), egg dumplings by Laurel Enterprises Corp (桂冠), organic frozen tofu by organic food store chain Leezen (里仁), meatballs sold at A. Mart (愛買) and handmade frozen tofu sold at Carrefour (家樂福).
Taichung Health Bureau Director Hsu Yung-nien (徐永年) said that if the companies do not improve the products within a specified time frame, they could be fined between NT$30,000 and NT$3 million (US$999 and US$93,911).
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