A paper submitted by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to the international scientific journal Food Additives & Contaminants is expected to offer a new methodology to discern the difference between extra virgin olive oil and refined olive oil, further safeguarding national food safety, the agency said.
The process involves spiking samples of olive oil with 1,2-bis-palmitoyl-3-chloropropanediol, followed by analysis by a gas chromatography tandem mass spectrometer, the agency said.
FDA Section Chief Liao Chia-ding (廖家鼎), a contributing author of the article, said that oils usually produce high amounts of 3-monochloropropane-1,2-diol (3-MCPD) after being submitted to deodorization.
Extra virgin olive oil, which is cold pressed, should theoretically not produce any, or very minor, amounts of 3-MCPD, Liao said.
The paper said that 3-MCPD in samples of refined olive oil ranged from 0.97 to 20.53 milligrams per kilogram (mg/kg), far in excess of 3-MCPD levels in extra virgin olive oil, which ranged from undetected to 0.24mg/kg.
The agency developed the method in response to a slew of tainted oil incidents in 2014, Liao said.
The method would help ensure that products live up to their prices, which vary between five and 10 times for high-grade extra virgin olive oil, refined olive oil and olive pomace oil, he added.
“We hope to use this method to conduct product testing,” Liao said, adding that it would contribute to the safeguarding of the nation’s food safety.
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
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
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,