The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) yesterday said 26 percent of food and dishwashing detergents failed its inspection for correct labeling.
In accordance with the government’s “Five Links of Food Safety” policy, which includes enhanced inspections, the FDA initiated a national project for inspecting food and dishwashing detergents across the nation from April to May.
Of the 236 items tested for correct labeling 61 had problems, but all of the 100 items tested for arsenic, heavy metals, methyl alcohol, fluorescent brightener and nonylphenol-based surfactants were within the required limits, the tests showed.
Photo: courtesy of the Food and Drug Administration
The most common reasons that products failed the labeling inspections were because they had failed to include the chemical ingredients in Chinese characters, or used imprecise words or terms such as “food-grade,” “natural,” or “toxin-free,” FDA Southern Taiwan Management Center Director Liu Fang-ming (劉芳銘) said.
Many detergent makers label their products with this type of jargon in a bid to make consumers feel safe buying them, but customers can be misled into thinking that it is safe to eat just-washed food or utensils even if the detergent is not properly rinsed off, Liu said.
The FDA in May last year announced a set of principles for labeling food and dishwashing detergents, under which companies are required to fully disclose the ingredients on labels.
The Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation (食品安全衛生管理法) stipulates that the required information on labels must be written in Chinese characters, and misleading or exaggerated terminology must be avoided.
Starting from Jan. 1 next year, detergent products that claim to be made of “natural” or “organic” ingredients are also to be required to include the percentage of such ingredients on their labels, Liu said .
People should carefully read product labels and not completely believe terms such as food-grade or toxin-free, the FDA said, adding that the public should use the products according to the instructions or warnings on the labels to reduce the risk of detergent residue remaining on food or tableware.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching